


After Hours

by LustMonster



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: AU, Charles is a terrible influence, Codependency, Erik is hopelessly in love, M/M, Mind Control, Serial Killers, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:18:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LustMonster/pseuds/LustMonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles and Erik are serial killers in their city that have been corresponding for years but never met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**I.**

No matter how often he thinks about it, Erik can never quite remember how it all began.  How he and X found each other, how and when he started to care for the equally twisted man in a manner much deeper than that related to friendship. If he is to look back in proper, it feels as if he was going through life anonymously, his darkest exploits his own to appreciate and purposely denying himself contact with others.

And then there was X.

Suddenly, there was X.

X splattering the city with his initial, carving himself out a niche in history, striking fear into the hearts of its residents in a way Erik’s own work never quite did. Unlike Erik, his type was seemingly nonexistent. One day a hooker in a back alley with the neat little ‘X’ decorating her abdomen, the next a low-risk businessman sodomized with a tire iron and left in front of the police station, that letter identifying just who was responsible.

And of all the sick fucks in the vast city, somehow, X chose Erik. Artless, angry, sadistic, Erik.

Sometimes he wonders if it’s a blessing or a curse.

 **II.**

 _For you see, each day I love you more_

 _Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow._

 _-X_

 _Ps. Check the news on Tuesday_

The most recent response sits nestled in its place in Erik’s catalog of their three year long back and forth, yet he can remember it perfectly. The ‘T’ in ‘today’ has a slight smudge, and there’s a crinkle in the corner where the beeping of his watch made him start and jerk the scissors. He can envision the words behind his eyes, and hopes X saw his reply.

The television sits atop the small island separating the living room and kitchenette, turned down to background noise as Erik moves around his tiny apartment, trying to get ready for the day, consumed by the happy anxiety that starts up whenever X sends him something so tantalizing. He fumbles with the buttons on his dress shirt, knots his tie almost irreparably and has to use his restless hands to fasten his pants for the first time in what some would call too long.

The report comes in just when he’s beginning to contemplate staying home from work until whatever X had planned comes to light.

 _"Another victim of the infamous 'X-killer' was found today in Monroe Park. Twenty-seven year old Marcia Tomlinson was a newlywed and mother of two young girls."_ The newswoman's orange-hued face is replaced by that of the victim, young and beautiful. Pin-straight platinum blond hair tumbles down to perky breasts, the pallid tops peeking out of a blue scoop-neck top which complements her perfectly Aryan, azure eyes.

She looks like the type of woman that coasted through life at the top, banking on her perfect looks and turning her very European nose up at those she deemed “lower class.” Which is, of course, why Erik hates her immediately. He can’t help but wonder if X knew that, if that was why he picked this particular woman to carve up like a Thanksgiving turkey, or if he simply took extra pride in this kill and wanted to share it. The thought is a selfish one, but this wouldn’t be the first time X has given him such a wonderful present, always seeming to know just how to make Erik smile.

A quick peek in the Classifieds is all the answer he needs. Beneath an ad for a used car the owner is so desperate to get rid of he’s willing to sell for fifty dollars sits the innocuous two words, far more laconic than the long-winded or poetic responses Erik is used to.

 _Happy Holidays_

 _-X_   

Erik quirks a brow but disregards it, pulling the scissors out of the junk drawer in his kitchenette. With care, he begins cutting the two lines out of the paper, gingerly extracting it from the rest of the text and laying it on his desk to catalog later.

His watch beeps and his daily eight a.m. sigh appears right on time.

Class calls

***

Erik steps up to the podium with the confidence of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing, who’s done this so many times he could recite the words he’s about to say when being tortured to distraction.

“Good morning and welcome to Engineering 6. For those of you that don’t know me, I am Professor Lehnsherr. My expectations are simple: I speak, you listen. You do not speak when I do or I will have you out of this class faster than you can say ‘but my major’. I don’t care if you show up, that’s your responsibility. I will not slow down or go back so you had better keep up or get the notes after class. Any questions not pertaining to the subject at hand must wait until after class. Do you understand?”

The silence presses in from all sides of the lecture hall and he smiles, shark-like to a fault.

“Wonderful.”

 **III.**

The air on campus is different the first days of the semester. It seems as if every female has been bitten by some travelling love bug and the boys react with the usual surliness of men who feel their dating pool has downsized dramatically.

It takes Erik nearly a week to find the cause, completely by accident of course.

***

By this time of night, everyone is gone. The students back in their dorms, instructors wherever they make their residences.

A sort of peace blankets the campus, the silence drifting alongside the faint buzzing of lamps along the walkways and the last, straggling crickets. For Erik, he prefers it this way, feeling the metal like a heartbeat against his consciousness, flicking out tendrils of his power and letting a satisfaction overtake him, knowing what he could do if he so chose.

His footsteps slap against the pavement, a steady, even pace, not too fast not too slow. Leisurely.

When the splashing first catches his attention, he isn’t sure what it is. It cuts through the night, seeming ten times louder than it would during the day when the students fill the pathways and it isn’t uncommon to hear something going on at the pool. But at this time of night . . . 

He can’t say what draws him to the indoor pool, but before he can think about it he’s pulling the door open and his nostrils are assailed by the scent of wet and chlorine.

In the style of a voyeur, Erik watches almost disinterestedly as a pale slip of a boy darts around beneath the water, his already ivory skin washed out by the blue tint and light from the pool. Almost as if sensing a new presence, the skinny swimmer emerges, dark hair sticking to his boyish face and falling in loose, dripping waves.

“The pool is closed.” He says curtly, and the other man grins.

“You must be Erik!” His voice is jovial and primly English. Erik feels a muscle in his jaw twitch and has to wonder if such disrespect is common in English colleges, assuming the boy is a transfer student.

“I’ll thank—”

“Charles Xavier,” he thrusts a damp hand out, grinning broadly. “I’m the new genetics professor.”

Involuntarily, his eyebrows fly up and it takes a moment to react, only moving when something in his mind nudges him lightly and he’s accepting the hand, palm meeting Xavier’s swim-wrinkled one. The smile that the other man is wearing makes him oddly uncomfortable, like the new professor can see the contents of his soul, like he _knows_. But the cast fades and it’s suddenly a perfectly pleasant look once more.

Erik catalogs it away in his mind, but in hindsight realizes it’s the first time he questions the innocence of Charles Xavier.

 

 **IV.**

Rage. Erik believes in its power, in the necessity of the darker emotions that come with it. The way metal sings, in tune with his wrath and doing his bidding with little concentration, seeming to take on a life of its own with only a taste of Erik’s thoughts.

Like now.

The sphere of iron hovers just above the dark-eyed man, dyed a rust-red from the blood that has coated it time and again. Slowly, so slowly, it begins to reshape itself, a sort of face mask with needle-like appendages where the mouth goes lowering itself onto the man’s open, panting mouth, choking off a wholly feminine screech. Erik closes his eyes and concentrates on the metal, slipping and slicing down the esophagus, entering the stomach and jabbing through the lining until it breaks free to wreak havoc on his internal organs.

He lets himself go, lets the metal do what it will. He can feel it reforming and stabbing, needling, bruising, ruining this man who dares bear the swastika so openly on his neck.

A piece of the metal flies off and out of the screaming man’s thigh to dash the mark from existence, to giver Erik a fraction of mental peace, knowing another of the men that made his family suffer will soon know death intimately. And so when his heart stills, Erik doesn’t feel quite so empty as he normally would.

 

 **V.**

 “So where did you teach before here, Professor Xavier?”

“Oxford.”

“ _How **prestigious**_.”

Erik can hear the bedroom eyes in the girl’s voice, almost feeling bad for Professor Xavier, though the uncomfortable coloring to his response just makes him smile.

“Y-Yeah, it was great . . .” The girl and professor round the corner, and something in his eyes lights up like a child finding his Christmas presents a month in advance. “Professor Lehnsherr! Just the man I was looking for. Excuse me, Laura, I really need to talk to Professor Lehnsherr.”

The girl is disappointed. Of course she is. She nods but doesn’t protest, continuing on down the hallway, an added swish to her wide hips.

“You wanted me?” Erik asks through the smile his students have compared to a shark.

“Oh, um. Well, yes. It’s Friday and I believe we like-minded individuals ought to stick together and . . . go out for drinks.”

“Like-minded?”

“Oh, yes. I think we too are very alike.” He smiles like a child with a secret he shouldn’t know. “And from what Emma has told me, you aren’t the most social of instructors. Admittedly, neither am I.”

Erik snorted. “Really, now? You seem to be the most social of us all.”

“Not by choice. However, it is in my nature to please.” He shrugs and loops his arm through Erik’s, brash and easygoing  with a devil-may-care smile that seemed odd on his face. “Now, please, Erik. Humor me, I tire of the company of such insipid people.” 

The taller man finds himself chuckling, but following the gentle nudging of his companion, disregarding the gentle voice in his head, whispers of a dream.

 _To hang up on the branches_

 _Our wavering love,_

 _And to break the sickle_

 _Of the Time who takes his revenge_

 _I'll leave it up again_

 _I'll leave it up to you_

 _You see, you can make the summer_

 _You see, I can carry the winter_

 _You see, we can get under way_

 _You see, we can crunch the Earth_


	2. Chapter 2

**VI.**

As Erik soon finds out, Xavier _really_ likes to swim.

He makes a habit of evening swims in the school's Olympic-sized pool, doing laps, practicing his dives or just goofing around and laughing to himself.

Somehow, two months into the semester, Erik finds himself an accomplice to the genetics professor's nightly shenanigans.

Charles' head pokes through the door to Erik's office, that devious little smile pulling up his sinfully scarlet lips. "Ready?" He asks pleasantly, eyes glinting and a loosely curled lock of hair brushing across his forehead.

"Let's find out." Erik rolls his eyes and puts down the newspaper, pretending he wasn't completely enthralled by a few lines of text.

 _Was my last present too preemptive? I love seeing you smile, you look like a predator. Tuesday will be ours, my darling. Go to the place where it all began._

 _-X_

“Something interesting in there?” Xavier asks mildly, resting his hands on the desk and leaning forward, cocking his head to the side and smiling like he knows exactly what Erik is looking at. Erik shakes his head, freeing it of the cobwebs of confusion.

“No, simply browsing.” Erik refolds the paper and sets it down, standing with a stretch and yawn, the hem of his turtleneck riding up and displaying the muscles in his stomach for a moment.

How did X know? Erik never doubts his ways but still, to think that he sees…

“Well then let’s be off.” The smaller man turns away, seeming to know Erik will follow.

Like the night they met, the campus is mostly empty, and those that do rush by pay the two men no attention. Charles walks with a certain little skip to his step and he hums slightly to himself, the faint melody just barely floating back to Erik.

“Hurry along or you’ll lose me,” he calls back, and Erik can’t help but feel as if the words hold a deeper meaning than the frivolous tone betrays. Whatever it is, the metal-bender speeds up to walk at his companion’s side, allowing Charles to link their arms all the way to the poolside.

“You’re shameless.” He shakes his head.

“My dear Professor Lehnsherr, do you really think anyone would suspect two men would be so blatant?”

“It’s late.”

“I’m foreign.” He winks and slides his arm around Erik’s waist, demonstrating yet again his lack of regard for personal space, or the comfortableness of others. And Erik tolerates it, his mind orbiting X, that the two of them know each other somehow, or the other man at least knows who _he_ is.

He wonders if he should be unsettled.

As usual, Charles strips down the moment the door shuts, disentangling himself from Erik and sending his clothes and shoes flying into dark, forgotten corners. With the same boldness he displayed outside, Charles stands at the poolside in his navy blue briefs, contemplating the water like one would a party unfamiliar.

The wavering pool light gives him an almost ghostly look, a spirit that lingered behind where he drowned. His eyes are softer than Erik has yet to see them, distant yet content, and when he looks back at his companion, they gleam with a fondness he is unused to seeing in anyone’s eyes. But the moment soon passes, and Xavier is all brightly unsettling smiles and salacious eyes.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he says lightly, bending down to stretch out his hamstrings and looking at Erik between his legs. Erik blinks, brows furrowing.

“Looking at you like . . . what, exactly?”

“Like you desperately want to fuck me,” and then he does a neat jackknife, robbing Erik of his chance to rebut immediately. He watches the pale shape of Xavier darting through the water like a minnow, limbs moving in a lazy synchronicity that suggests his muscles simply move from memory.

Before he can surface, Erik finds himself in nothing but his undershorts and diving right in after him, grabbing onto that slender waist and pushing it upwards.

They both come up with gasps, though Charles’ is marred with a laugh. “Did I offend?” He laughs, grinning cheekily and treading water with ease.

“Explain yourself,” Erik snaps, looking behind him as if expecting X’s shadowy form to be standing at the poolside and frowning in disapproval that his beloved would dare look at another with a lusty edge.

“What’s to explain? You watch my arse, you think I’m,” he sniggers, “ _pretty_ , and, really Erik, it’s written all over your face. Depraved? Is your boyfriend not tight enough for your taste?” His smile is positively obscene, and Erik shakes himself.

“My boyfriend?”

“Do you dislike the term? Do your prefer ‘man friend’ or something equally silly?”

“I do not have a boyfriend or a ‘man friend’ for that matter. I’m unattached.”

He scoffs. “I see you mooning over the papers. It’s quite sweet in an odd sort of way. He must be very lucky to have such a devoted man.”

“I already said—”

“I know what you said.” He shrugs and begins floating on his back, gazing straight ahead of him. “Is it unrequited, then? Or simply undefined?”

Erik twitches at how close the other man is, but doesn’t crack. “Xavier, can we not talk about my love life?”

“Would you prefer to talk about mine?”

“Yes, actually.”

He snorts and flips around, treading water again and grinning devilishly. “None of it’s true, you know.”

“None of what?”

“The rumors. I’m not sleeping with anyone. Completely celibate. I’m saving myself.”

“What, for marriage?” Now it’s Erik’s turn to scoff. “You hardly seem like the type.”

“Don’t I?” He dons the innocent face projected around students and the rest of their colleagues. “Bumbling little Professor Xavier? I wear cardigans and sweater-vests for Christ’s sake, of course I seem like the type.”

“Yes, but that’s not the real you.”

“The real me,” he echoes softly, teeth sinking into his lower lip. “No, I suppose not. Though who’s to say this is the real me either?”

“It isn’t.”

“And when did you become the expert on Charles Francis Xavier?”

Erik shrugs noncommittally. “Who knows, I could be wrong.”

“You aren’t. But this is close.”

“I know.”

“You know everything, don’t you?”

“Generally.”

“Prick.”

“Twink.”

Charles lets out a loud guffaw and sends a splash of chlorinated water Erik’s way. “You say that like you don’t consider it a turn-on!” He accuses with a wide, adoring grin.  Erik rolls his eyes and not-so-smoothly changes the subject back.

“Now tell me, what is someone like Charles Xavier waiting for before giving up his celibacy?”

“My soulmate.” His words are weightily airy.

“Your soulmate? I thought you were a man of science, not one who sits around waiting for the right guy.”

“Oh I am, but you see—I’ve already found him.”

“So you’re attached.”

“No.”

“But if you’ve found him . . .”

“I have. But he hasn’t found me.”

“What?”

“You’ll see. All in due time, the pawns will align and you will see.” Charles is still smiling, and only when he thinks back does Erik realize the other man’s lips hadn’t moved to form words once.

 

 **VII.**

 **  
**

The night is cold enough to expose breath.

Erik folds his arms, the time-softened leather of his jacket making small noises of protest as it rubs against itself. He hurries through the streets at a brisk pace, not having slowed down since waiting around for Xavier for nearly an hour to explain why he couldn’t make their nightly swimming date. The other man never showed up and he had only left after one of the other professors said she’d seen him leave earlier that evening looking “happy as a lark, practically singing show tunes.”

 _Damn him_ , is all he can think, feeling the metal surrounding him trembling and groaning. _Damn him to the lowest rung of hell_. The narcissistic voice in the back of his mind has to wonder if Xavier did it on purpose, just to make Erik squirm, to see how he took to the sudden shift in what had become routine.

 _Of course not, don’t be silly_ , a small, persistent voice whispers, and Erik flinches as if it had somehow physically assaulted him.

He shakes off the feeling of disquiet as the park comes into view, almost immediately consumed by the sight of it.

***

 _Winter was just beginning to take its hold, and the night was unseasonably frigid for mid-October. Faded leaves gathered in piles on the sidewalks, the dead ones crunching beneath Erik’s feet as he strolled at a leisurely pace away from the campus. It was more of a scenic route to his home, but he felt almost caged, and couldn’t go there to stare at those too-familiar four walls._

 _Not for the first time, he felt the need for a change of pace, but he had it good in this city, and leaving when he didn’t to seemed unnecessary. So he walked, wandered really, through the night-drenched city, the occasional car speeding by and his own footfalls being the only sounds penetrating the thick, soupy darkness._

 _He saw the park in the distance, its marble fountain gleaming under a streetlamp, oddly pristine for something that sat in a public recreational area. It seemed like an obvious choice to wander through the park, navigate its shadowy paths, perhaps come across a mugger or someone else with an unconscious death wish. The thought brought a predatory smile to his lips, and he sped up slightly, J-walking without a glance either way and passing under the small, metal sign declaring the entrance to Xavier Park._

 _He was barely two steps in when he smelled the blood. It hung in the air like a thick soup, and Erik could only follow it to the source._

 _At the foot of the great, white fountain was the body. A young woman, hazel-eyed and small, the blood standing out on her deeply tanned skin like ink on parchment. Her eyes were frozen open and her body was riddled with deep gashes. Bruises, burns, the whole nine yards. Her clothes, however, were completely clean as if her murderer had taken care not to dirty them. The shirt, however, was pushed up to the bottom of her small breasts to reveal a flat midriff untouched save for the still-wet, gleaming ‘X’ carved deep into her flesh._

 _All Erik could do was marvel. The wounds were many, but they seemed to form patterns. Whorls and dashes, each with a match, symmetrical in many ways, like henna. The longer he stared, the more fascinated he became, the more curiosity bloomed in his abdomen._

 _And he wanted to know this man who he knew instantly would equally fascinate and infuriate him. Because of course a man that carved his initial on his victims would have an at least slight air of braggadocio about him. But he could also only be intelligent. Only be calculating and controlled._

 _And that thought excited him._

***

Erik smiles to himself as he J-walks, just like that night, and rushes into the park, more than eager.

And of course the body is a young man, pale-skinned and very blond, steely gray eyes staring without sight up at the sliver of a moon.

And of course the ‘X’ is carved into his stomach.

What doesn’t seem typical, however, is the delicate paper flower perched in the dead man’s slightly open mouth. Erik looks around several times before stealing over so snatch the flower out and recede into the shadows.

 _‘Open me,’_ the flat tip reads in small, elegant script. With much gusto, but a carefulness not to tear, Erik unfolds the bud, smoothing it out into a normal sheet of paper.

 _Do you remember that first night? I can still remember your glee at realizing you were not alone. At finding someone like me. It’s been nearly two years, now, though it simultaneously feels like no time and a lifetime. I have heard that is the way of great loves: they always feel fresh and new year old as the sands of time. Can you imagine us growing old together, Erik? (You know that’s the first time I’ve written your name?_ _It feels amazing. Erik Erik Erik. Erik Lehnsherr. I’m mad about Erik Lehnsherr._ _Well that was nice.) Well of course not, you have no clue who I am. And for the time being, I think I like it like that._

 _Soon, I promise you. I swear by our park by the end of this year, you will know me._

 _You see, you can make the summer_

 _You see, I can carry the winter_

 _You see, we can get under way_

 _You see, we can crunch the Earth_

 _All of my Love,_

 _X_

Erik stares down at the paper, cherishes it instantaneously. All of the places he messed up and scratched out a letter or got ahead of himself and started the next word before the one at hand. It has such an endearing quality to it that his messages in the paper never could that Erik wants to kiss the page as if it were the man.

But he doesn’t.

He casts a last sidelong glance at the body, refolds the paper and slips back into the night. 

 **VIII.**

In the first months of the semester, Erik learns many things about Charles Xavier, both endearing and infuriating. The first, which toes the line of being both, is that the Englishman is a shameless, self-indulgent lush.

But a lush with taste.

October melts into November and he finds himself introducing Xavier as his "best friend" and playing monitor to his extravagant drinking habits, deciding how much is enough and setting the now infamous 'Xavier Cutoff' which bartenders in the various pubs they frequent have come to respect.

"You're a horrible person," Xavier accuses, but he's smiling and tipsy so it holds no weight.

"You say that too often for me to have any hope of thinking you believe it."

"Well a'course I do," his voice is slightly slurred and there's a drunken flush high on his pale cheeks. "You tell me what I can...how much I can, acting like you're m'sister or...somethin'."

Erik laughs and slings an arm around Xavier's shoulders to stop him from veering off into a parked truck. He grumbles and steers them into a crosswalk, leaning heavily on Erik and leeching his warmth as if the taller man were a space heater.

"Where ever are you going?" The metal-bender chuckles and looks down at the slightly sweaty mop of hair.

"Special place," he grunts, stumbling slightly on the curb and looking up with a grin. "'s my place."

Erik glances away from his mildy inebriated friend and feels his brows soar up at the sign declaring the entrance to Xavier Park. Not for the first time, he glances around wildly, half-expecting to see X's shadowy form emerging from the line of trees, his eyes gleaming with disappointment.

 _"Deceitful man,"_ he would hiss, fingers wrapping around Erik's neck. _"Lying, deceitful man."_ And of course he would kill Charles. Because X would be insulted and destroy Charles. Small, pale-skinned, laughing...laughing?

Erik glances down at the smaller man, who seems intent on reaching the fountain, and notices his shaking shoulders, chin to his chest.

"What is so hilarious?"

"You, of course." His grin, as usual, is downright lascivious, amplified by the way he stops and turns to rest his long-fingered hands on Erik's hips, slipping his thumbs into the taller's belt loops. "No one's going to try to _kill_ me." He giggles. "'specially not your secret boyfried."

Erik's stare is blank. "I didn't say anything about anyone killing you, Charles."

For the first time since Erik has known him, Charles Xavier falters. A shadow darts through his eyes, a look of horror claiming his features. But he smooths it over.

"Of course not, Erik." He smiles and giggles nervously, disentangling himelf to turn and stare at the fountain, his posture rigid.

"Charles?" Cautiously, Erik goes to lay his hand on the small of Charles’ back surprised when he steps away.

“Don’t touch me,” He snaps, then adds, considerably sobered, “just…give me a minute.” Those usually steady hands tremble like leaves in the breeze and his brow is furrowed.

“Charles, what—”

“You know this is my park?” Like his body, Charles’ voice shakes and Erik can’t understand but allows him to ramble. “My dad…when I was a baby, Mother complained about how horrible parks were so my dad…he sank money into this one to make it nice.” He laughs bitterly. “I went to this park _once_ _in my entire life_. Don’t apologize, it’s pathetic.”

“Charles—”

“Fuck it.” The vulgar word sounds somehow _wrong_ coming from such a pretty mouth, and Erik isn’t sure if he should linger on that or the fact that the genetics professor is stripping off his rumpled clothes and shoes and tossing them at Erik.

“Charles Xavier, it is freezing out here, what the _hell_ are you doing?”

Charles glances over his shoulder to grin like a maniac before splashing into the pond, submersing  himself so thoroughly the only indication he’d ever been there were the ripples and bubbles.

“Dammit, Charles,” Erik mutters, dropping the outfit in a pile and heading to the side of the water, staring into its dark depths and wondering if he should go in after his obviously intoxicated friends. The kick of a thin leg tells Erik that, at least, he isn’t drowning, which is followed by him surfacing, shivering violently but smiling.

“Y-You didn’t—you di-didn’t c-come after m-me,” he accuses, still grinning, the water at his waist.

“Of course not, idiot.”

“W-What if I drowned?”

“I would come in after you if you were drowning.”

“H-How did you kn-know?”

“You would have been thrashing.”

Charles giggles, wading to the edge and holding his arms out like a child demanding to be picked up.

“Yes, Charles?” But he’s already crossing the distance between them and helping the skinny creature out of the stone construction. In that moment, Erik almost feels as if some sort of balance has been shifted, but then the thought is gone like a paper snatched from the wind and when he thinks about that night the next day he finds a gap in his memory, but doesn’t question it.

Why would he?

 

 **IX.**

“Erik,” Charles’ breath smells of some floral tea with an underlay of Erik’s mint toothpaste and something slightly alcoholic. “Erik, wake up, work in thirty.”

Without warning, Erik jerks up, almost conking Charles in the head, which seems to be hysterical to him.

In the early morning light, Charles gleams like a new penny, his pupils constricted, leaving those hauntingly blue irises open for inspection. His hair is pleasantly rumpled and he’s clad in one of Erik’s turtlenecks and his own slacks from the night before.

“Good lord, Charles, are you a masochist?”

“Maybe.”

Erik tugs at the hem of his shirt and smiles at the shrug and stretch Charles responds with. It’s completely too large for him, the sleeves falling over his hands, collar nearly engulfing his chin, not at all the nice, snug fit Erik buys the shirts for. But it somehow suits him.

“Perhaps I should wear your clothes more often.”

“Perhaps.”

The flirtation is so casual Erik barely feels himself slipping into it.

“Here’s your paper and your coffee is out on the table. Black, right?”

“You say that like you don’t know.”

He winks. “It would seem presumptuous of me to  simply state it like that. What if I was wrong?”

“You wouldn’t be.”

“Thank you for the faith, my friend.”

“It isn’t faith, just how you are. You never say things unless you know them to be facts. It’s just how you are.”

Charles laughs and it’s musical like thousands of bells chiming in harmony.

“I suppose you are right.”

“I know.”

Charles slips out of the room and Erik opens his paper, flipping around in it sightlessly and occasionally pausing in case the other man hears and deduces any more than he already has. But the soft sound of Charles humming as he bustles about the kitchen makes him relax and he opens to the Classifieds.

Nothing.

 

 **X.**

Erik places Charles into the inexplicability category alongside X. If someone had told him even days before the two met that he would become entangled with a man like Charles Francis Xavier, he would have laughed and put a pipe through the idiot’s skull.

Now he looks at his sink and sees the other man’s travel toothbrush sitting next to his own. _“Since I seem to end up at yours so often when we go drinking.”_ He’d explained, arranging them like one would a husband and wife’s. The toothbrush and chestnut hairs tangled in the teeth of Erik’s comb. _“You don’t mind, my friend.”_ He’d said with a smile when Erik had walked in to see him combing his hair into submission.

Small shifts which add up to large shifts which add up to a whole new view.

And Erik doesn’t know what it is he’s seeing. 


	3. Chapter 3

  


**XI.**

  


**  
**

"Happy Thanksgiving, Erik!" Xavier grins and throws the door to his flat open, warm light spilling out into the hall and enveloping Erik. He shoots his friend a bemused smirk and enters the cheerily lit unit.

It has a lived-in quality Erik's own living space never did, dark-wood bookshelves lining the rooms, each filled to capacity with impressive tomes. Two tatterdemalion leather sofas had been pushed back to make room for a long wood table weighed down by a vast array of foods and two lit candles. Beneath the window on a rickety looking iron table balances a gramophone, records leaning haphazardly aganst the little table and an easy jazz tune floating from it. A messy kitchenette sits to the right just inside the door and between two shelves is another door, presumably to Charles' bedroom.

"Nice."

Charles laughs. "It'll do." _For the time being_ , Erik hears in his mind, that increasingly familiar little voice sighing. "I remembered you gave up on keeping kosher, so I made a little bit of everything."

A 'little bit of everything' by Charles' terms consists of a turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, cranberry sauce, stuffing, cornbread, two loaves of sourdough bread and macaroni & cheese, all in portions large enough to sate an army.

"Are you trying to fatten me up, Liebling?" Erik asks affectionately, reaching out to catch Charles around the waist.

The genetics professor laughs and wraps his slender arms around Erik's neck, leaning away from him and looking up with mischief gleaming in his eyes. "Perhaps. Or at least enough so you can't walk out the door."

"You're a demon."

"Of course."

Charles grins and looks up through his lashes, your move broadcasting from every line of his body.

What they have is...tentative. Charles knows Erik has somone dear to him and never demands anything but his body, though still staying firmly celibate in devotion to his own 'soulmate'.

And Charles has just tossed the ball into his court.

Erik's hands move up to the small of Charles' back and drag him forward, one holding him in place, the other tangling into the smaller man's hair and pulling him in for a bruising kiss. Almost disturbingly strong, Charles surges forward, pressing Erik against one of the shelves and dragging him down to meet his frenzied kisses. After a moment, Erik turns the tables, crowding Charles instead, shoving him into the books and setting his rear on one of the shelves.

"God, Erik," Charles moans as if wanting his entire building to hear. A smile fit for a devil curves the metal-bender's lips as he detaches them from Charles' and attacks his neck, dead set on marking that perfectly pale skin.

By the time ten minutes comes, the entirety of Charles' neck is littered with lovebites, hips bruised from the eager dig of Erik's fingers.

“Erik, the food,” He manages to gasp, gripping the taller man’s shoulders and panting.

“Damn the food.” Erik growls, slamming Charles back into the shelves to illustrate his point, grinning at the way the smaller man moaned and hissed helplessly.

“Erik Lehnsherr, I’ve been slaving over a hot stove all day, you are going to _eat my damn food_.” Something in Erik’s mind is what pulls him from Charles, and not the heated words of agitation. “Now make yourself a goddamn plate.” He snarls, eyes narrowing, one twitching, and Erik is compelled to do so, though he doesn’t give his body the commands, it simply _does it_.

“Charles—”

“Shut up.”

“Charles—”

“Just _shut the fuck up!_ ” Charles is rubbing his temple, and his fingers are trembling. He steps away and taps a cigarette out of the small, cardboard box, lighting it and taking a long drag, avoiding looking at Erik. “I’m so sorry, Erik. Can’t say what came over me there.”

Erik nods mutely, catching his first glimpse of the monster that wears Charles Xavier’s skin.

***

As it soon turns out, Charles’ cooking is far better than Erik would have expected for a man in his early twenties living alone. The meat is succulent and everything is cooked to the perfect consistency. Erik finds himself singing Charles’ praises throughout the meal, which makes the smaller of the two smirk and preen.

They sit on the smaller sofa, thighs touching, and by the time they’re tucking into dessert, Charles has ended up in Erik’s lap. He moves the fork like a plane and pops a bite of pie past Erik’s lips, grinning like a parent finally coercing a stubborn child to eat. Erik chuckles and leans back so that his head rests on the armrest and he can spoon the very willing Charles.

“This is quaint,” the Englishman murmurs, setting the plate down and tracing Erik’s face with his fingertips, twisted somewhat awkwardly and smiling contentedly.

“One would almost think we were in love,” Erik responds calmly, yawning and pulling Charles in closer, almost missing the shadow that dances across his features before he responds.

“Yes, almost.”

A slight rain has picked up, but—mixed with the dulcet tones of the record playing—it’s calming. If they had a fireplace, Erik imagines, it would be perfect. And for that moment, he lets himself drift into a scenario in which this is the way of life. In which he and Charles are madly in love.

 

  


**XII.**

X's letters become infrequent. Terse. The beauty of his kills deteriorates before Erik's eyes until the only true indicator is the 'X' carved into the victims. He tries to claw it out of the man, but he shies away from any telling information, and Erik wonders if he knows about Xavier (only Xavier, he can no longer think of him as Charles lest unwanted emotions surge up to claim his heart). If he's mistaken the need for carnal affections for something else.

And so Erik draws away. It’s the only way to salvage his love. He makes excuses to avoid their swim-dates and politely returns the items that have migrated to his home in a box left in Xavier’s office with a note. Xavier doesn't understand, but Erik can't find the words to explain.

In turn, X's state devolves faster, and Erik shuts the other man completely out, save for the occasional, brief small talk as they rush about campus, the only amount of contact he can allow himself without feeling a prickle of discontent. Xavier seems consistently off, as if his mind is spread to all corners of the earth. He grows thin and his skin becomes waxy and corpse-like, a flush of cold constantly on his cheeks and only donning the threadbare cardigans he seems so fond of as protection against the growing winter. Yet and still, Erik avoids contact, though he blames himself slightly, remembering a late-night conversation in which Xavier explained a deep-seated aversion to change, especially the sudden variety.

 _“Ever since childhood, I suppose none of the sudden changes in my life have ever been for the better.”_

But it can't be helped, not now.

***

Xavier's voice has become almost unfamiliar to him by the approaching end of December, which is why he stops when someone calls "Erik!" too late in realizing who that someone is. Xavier bounds toward him, looking so wan and near-skeletal it occurs to him to wonder what brought this about before shoving it away like all other thoughts of the approaching man.

He's out of breath but no less beautiful for it, a flush high on his cheeks, splashing color into his ashen face.

"What?" Erik demands, almost harshly, and apologizes quickly for the tone when the younger professor looks crestfallen.

"I-I...E-Erik please sp-please spend Christmas w-with me. I know you're J-Jewish but...please?" He chokes out, eyes swimming with emotion, locking him in place.

"I—"

 _"Please."_

And though Erik fights to find the harm in it, he can't.

And assents.

 

  


**XIII.**

 

A plume of sweet-smelling smoke drifts from the tip of Xavier's cigarette, curling around his head like some sort of mocking halo, clinging to the chestnut wave of his hair and caressing his ivory skin like the practiced hand of a lover. Bathed in a streetlamp's warm glow, along with the coiling smoke-serpent, he could almost be angelic, if only his expression preached benevolence instead of a cool disinterest.

Erik can feel affection pooling in his chest in the spot that pulses with _CharlesCharlesbeautifulCharlesperfectCharlesadorationinfatuationCharlesCharlesCharles_ , which is of course when the other man looks up, grinning knowingly and waving lazily. He crosses the street, single-minded, and can't fight the way he smiles. Charles stubs out the cigarette and pushes off the streetlamp to wrap his skinny arms around Erik's neck.

"Happy Christmas, Erik," he breathes, though there is an odd disconnect in his gentle voice, reminding Erik what's become of them.

"Merry Christmas, Charles." When Erik finally let's him go, the feel of Charles' fragile bones beneath his fingers lingers there, as if they remained in the dips and curves of his birdlike makeup. Xavier, his mind hisses furiously. Not _"Charles," **"Xavier."** Not Charles anymore_. And Erik exhales slowly, massaging the bridge of his nose and trying to be discreet about the space he puts between them.

But of course Charles notices. He remains silent, though, and reaches out to take Erik’s hand, smiling encouragingly. Erik ignores it and smiles. “Where to?”

“Just mine.” Charles drops his hand with a frown and turns away to lead the way to his flat. Erik’s feet have the route practically memorized, and slip into the routine he was sure they forgot.

***

Charles’ flat is almost completely different from the last time he was over. Dark drapes cover the windows and all light fixtures save for a small lamp in the very center of the room. Several photo albums sit beside it alongside a mattress and empty containers of takeaway Chinese.

“Oh, ‘scuse the mess,” Charles murmurs, distracted and airy. He shuffles into the unit and kicks the containers away.

“Xavier, what happened to you?”

“Me?” He laughs and looks at Erik slowly, an edge of hysterics to his voice. “ _You_ happened to me! You—you blighter.”

Erik sighs, not quite ready to have this conversation but knowing it would come eventually. “Xavier—”

“Xavier. You can’t even call me by my own bloody first name, for fuck’s sake, Erik!”

“Excuse me, _Charles_. This is…for the best.”

“Yes, ignoring each other. Losing your best friend. This is all ‘for the best’.”

“Yes, it is.” Erik can feel his patience wearing thin, but fights to keep his voice even. “You have your ‘soulmate’ and I—”

“You have X.” Charles laughs and glares spectacularly. “But X isn’t perfect anymore! He’s losing it, going downhill. You were supposed to forget about him! You were supposed to be _disgusted_!” Charles has resorted to pacing between a row of candles, rubbing his eyes and running trembling ringers through his mussed hair. “You were supposed to love _me_!”

“How do you know about X?”

Charles rounds on him, his laugh high-pitched and nearer to a shriek. “How do I _know_? I created **him**. Everything he is!”

“You…know X.” Erik wonders if he should be this surprised or not.

“I _am_ X!”

The silence stretches on between them, Charles having stopped his frantic pacing, Erik staring at him.

“You…are X. You always have been. And…you never told me?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“He was…a mask!” Charles’ voice has yet to calm down from the manic, hysterical edge and Erik almost approaches him before thinking better of it. “You were supposed to love _me_ and forget him! When he got sloppy and pulled away you were supposed to let go not hold on tighter, you stupid, stupid man!”

“Then you must not know me at all,” Erik murmurs, fingers brushing the cool metal of the doorknob.

“I know everything about you, Erik.” Charles laughs and claps his hands together. “Absolutely everything.”

“How?”

“You have your tricks, I have mine.” He taps his temple and grins. “But it’s okay now. Now you know and—”

“And nothing.”

Charles falters, luminescent eyes swimming. “W-What do you mean?” He furrows his brows, staring at Erik intently. “You’re mad at me.”

“To understate it.”

“Please…Please don’t leave.” Charles reaches his arms out to Erik, fingers fumbling in the seemingly vast space between them. Space he can no longer bridge with his sweet smile or shining eyes.

“You don’t want me here right now.”

“Yes I do! I always want you here, Erik…I love—”

“We don’t lie to the people we love.”

Charles’ mouth opens and closes, as if trying to find the right words, but Erik silences him. “I’ll call you when I figure out how to forgive you.”  
And when he shuts the door, the finality is clear.

  


**XIV.**

_What’s wrong with Professor Xavier? He looks sick._

 _Jeez, prof looks like hell._

 _I wonder if this is professor Lehnsherr’s fault. I always thought they were fucking._

 _Wonder what’s for lunch._

Charles shuffles through campus, trying and failing to drown out the minds of passing students and coworkers that lingered over the holiday. He knows it’s his fault Erik took to avoiding him completely. Yet he can’t help but feel a flicker of hurt whenever those eyes which gleam with distaste light upon him and linger, if only to scowl.

It is this knowledge that propels him into Dean Stryker’s office.

The portly man looks up over a stack of papers at the genetics professor with questions in his eyes.

“Yes, Professor Xavier?”

“I’m requesting an extended leave immediately following the break. I…need some time to get my head screwed back on.”

“And how long are you asking for?”

“A month?”

Dean Stryker looks at him. “You’ll be absent for the beginning of the semester.”

“I am aware.”

“Finding a substitute will be difficult.”

“I’ll leave all of my notes. I’m just asking for time.”

He considers him and Charles sighs, pushing a tendril of agreement into the disagreeable man’s thoughts. All at once, Dean Stryker nods. “Of course, dear boy. Take until March, if you need it.”

“Thank you for being so…understanding.”

 

 **XV.**

“…on leave until March, I think.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t say. Something about getting his ‘head screwed on’.”

“Poor thing. Professor Xavier is such a sweetheart.”

Erik freezes in the middle of sipping his champagne. The two women stand at the other end of the bar, but their conversation carries, and, against his better judgment, Erik finds himself moving toward them. Finds himself asking what they mean.

“You mean you didn’t hear?” Asks the first, flipping her pin-straight hair and setting down her martini.

“Clearly.”

“Professor Xavier is going on extended leave until March.”

“What? Why?”

“Can’t say.” The second responds, shrugging and looking at Erik with a knowing smile. “You two should be more discreet, y’know?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean…everybody knew you were hitting it.” They titter and Erik can feel his expression darkening.

“I was not ‘hitting it’. Charles was my friend.”

“Sure thing, Lehnsherr.” They roll their eyes in synch and turn away to continue gossiping about the love lives of their colleagues.

Charles is gone…Erik’s eyes droop closed and he downs the rest of his champagne in one go. Of course he’s gone. It makes sense. Out of all of the things Charles Xavier has done, this is one that actually makes sense.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the love and thanks to my beautiful Guru who has taken this fic beyond where I ever imagined. And to all of you. Your comments are amazing. You guys make my day and make me want to keep writing. I never dreamed that this would be as loved and well-received as it is. Thank you, each and every one of you, you have my love and adoration.

  
**XVI.**   


This isn’t the first time Hank has seen Charles Xavier a complete mess, though he prefers not to think about the first. The door swings open and the genetics professor more or less stumbles inside, bloodshot eyes red-rimmed and puffy, his very being stinking of liquor.

“H-Hey Hunk—I mean, Hank.” He giggles and shoves off the doorjamb, just barely making it to the couch without acquainting his cheek with the hardwood.

“Charles, I thought I made it abundantly clear—”

“‘Never to come back here’ I know, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” he shrugs and glances up from a decorative pillow, smiling sheepishly.

“What happened to your place?”

Before Charles can answer, a high-pitched shriek breaks through the apartment. Hank lets loose a breathy curse and scuttles into the room Charles can only assume is the nursery.

“What are you projecting?” He asks nastily when he returns, cradling the squalling infant and trying to calm him, bouncing the azure child with a practiced skill.

“So sorry.” Though there is no visible difference, the tense atmosphere surrounding Charles dissipates into easy serenity. “Come to Uncle Charles, Kurtie. Come on, sweetheart.” He rolls onto his back and opens his arms, cooing at the little boy and speaking so gently even Hank with his enhanced hearing has to strain to understand him.

With a loud _crack_ and haze of cerulean smoke, Kurt disappears from Hank’s arms and into Charles’ his sour mood immediately brightening, a nonsensical babble of infant gibberish spilling from his lips.

“I know, my sweet, uncle _knows_ ,” Charles fusses over him, smiling affectionately, though Hank can see the slight downturn at the corners of his eyes, which the joy barely flickers through.

“Chale!” Kurt squeals, tugging a chestnut wave and latching onto his nose with his razor-sharp baby teeth.

“No, no, sweet. Uncle is not a teething ring.” He chastises gently, smoothing back Kurt’s hair and detaching him. Instead of frowning or pouting or any of the like, Kurt finds a new fascination in the buttons of Charles’ cardigan and goes to town on it.

“So…are you going to answer me?” Hank finally asks, arms folding over his chest.

“I already told you. I need somewhere to stay.”

“Why?”

“I could…” His fingers brush the general vicinity of his temple and Hank shakes his head furiously.

“Never again.”

“I apologized for—”

“No.”

“Oh, fine.” Charles’ sigh is put upon, but he launches into the abridged version of his issue with Erik, leaving out the more sordid details whilst entertaining his nephew.

“So…you lied to this guy, alienated him, and now you’re taking an extended leave from your position. I don’t see why you need to stay here.”

“In case he comes to see me. I don’t want to be there. Besides, the change of scenery could do me good. And I haven’t seen my sweet in so long.” With that, he squeezes Kurt for effect, shooting Hank an innocent, adoring look. “Please? I’m just dandy around children. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

“Chale!” Kurt giggles, and Charles smiles.

“You see? He loves me.”

 _He doesn’t know any better_. Hank finds himself thinking, and knows Charles hears it by the wry smile that graces his sensual mouth for barely a moment.

“This pains me to say, Hank, but I do have a right to my nephew. And if you deny me that right…” His smile is absolutely demonic, and Hank shivers. “But we’re old friends, I’m sure you had your misgivings, but we’ve moved past that. I just packed one overnight bag, no clue how long I’ll stay, yes?”

By the way he smiles, Hank knows his hands are tied. He nods his assent, and swallows what’s left of his pride.

  
**XVII.**   


_She smells of comfort. Home and spices that his nose cannot quite place._

 _She is beautiful, dancing through the rooms, hair changing color in the light, or maybe it’s just her will._

 _Her middle is growing large like her womb and she recites names with question marks hanging at their ends._

 _She is laughing, arms open, hands open, singing._

 _She is a bird, she is the air, she is everything and nothing. Beauty and taint. Cerulean and scarlet, ridged and smooth._

Charles flies into wakefulness, panting, drenched in his own sweat, eyes bugging out. He pants and drags sleep-numbed fingers through his damp locks, taking in several shuddery breaths and looking around.

Hank’s small apartment is quiet, awash with dawn’s cool, gray light. A quick spreading of his telepathic net tells Charles Hank is finally asleep in his room, dreaming of Kurt and Raven, the former curled up on Charles’ thighs, his pointed tail flicking about restlessly. His eyes open slowly, a slow smile spreading his small, rosebud lips. Kurt giggles and chirps a bright, “Chale!”

Hush, little one, Charles concentrates his admonishment into a feather, a simple touch against Kurt’s small mind. The little boy’s eyes light up, as if he’s seen the mental feather, amazement dawning on his small features.

“You like that?” He asks adoringly, lifting Kurt up to arrange him properly, leaning against the armrest. “You have to be very quiet, okay? And not tell Daddy Hank.” Kurt’s _YES_ stands out against the muddle of his thoughts. Charles smiles and shapes a bolt of protective love into a gleaming, patterned rattle, letting it smack lazily against Kurt’s thoughts before disappearing into the void of the infant’s mind.

Next, a memory cocooned in _lovecomfortsafe_ molded into a small, plastic bouncy-ball. Though Kurt is too young to project properly, or for there to be any order to his thoughts, Charles skims his mind for the gist of his emotions, his likes. He pours another memory in, in the form of one of Hank’s beaker’s, the content itself being a sparkling, blue solution. They go back and forth as such until near noon when Hank finally wakes up, shuffling into the living room and looking surprised, as if he forgot Charles’ presence.

“Good morning, Charles,” he murmurs, grudging as before.

“Hello, Hank.” He leans forward and kisses Kurt’s forehead. “I think he’s hungry.”

“Mmrph.”

“I didn’t know if you had him on a special diet,” Charles says loftily to the unspoken accusatory question. “And you said you didn’t want me poking around in your head. And his is too…childish.”

“Stay out of his head.”

“Not your authority.” The smile he fixes Hank with over Kurt’s unaware head is laughingly challenging, an invitation to fight him on the issue. “Or we could always ask Az—”

“No.”

“Which would make…me the final authority.” Charles grins and places Kurt at the edge of his knee, bouncing the excitable mutant child.

“Legally.”

“Mmhm!” He enthuses, kissing his nephew’s brow and rocking from side to side whilst keeping up with the bouncing.

“How long will you be staying?”

“As long as I need.”

  
**XVIII.**   


No one answers Erik’s knock. He tries again, fist coming down on the cheap wood repeatedly, the door rattling in its frame, the hollow pounding echoing down the hall, but there’s nothing. The familiar signature of Charles’ wristwatch is nowhere to be found in the unit, and he eventually gives up on social norms.

A calm wave of his hand springs the lock and the door swings inward, revealing a much cleaner room than when he’d last seen it. The lights are off, and he locks onto a lamp-switch in the corner, flicking it with a crooked finger and closing the front door behind him. There is a stillness and emptiness to the apartment that even Charles’ simple absence can’t explain. It’s as if nothing remains, no trace of the man who lived here breathing from the walls or books, and though they quite clearly are items owned by Charles Xavier, they no longer scream this as they once had.

The deeper into the apartment Erik goes, the more _wrong_ it feels. It has the same eerie stillness as a morgue, as a corpse whose soul has fled far away, leaving not even the shadowiest of ghosts in its wake. He pushes the bedroom door open for the first time and flinches immediately. Though arguably the cleanest part of the house, that walls are papered with newspaper clippings and photographs. All of the articles relate to Erik and each of the photos contain him. Some have the grainy, fuzzed edges that suggest they're candid, but most are shots from his time with Xavier. The pair of them posing at staff events, bars, parties, parks and carnivals. In retrospect, Erik remembers Charles' attachment to his camera, the insistence on documenting their time together as if he knew, even then, how fleeting it would prove to be.

Charles' bed is a nest of mismatched quilts and sheets, all of which retain the scent that is inarguably, distinctly _Charles_. A sort of lingering warmth clings to them, as if the young professor could have just disentangled himself and stumbled into the bathroom. The bed is plush, almost too-soft, and dips when Erik sits on it, slowly lowering himself to a horizontal position and burying his nose in one goose-feather pillow.

He knows, instinctively, the longer he stays in the place where Charles belongs, the more his anger will dissipate. Already, the fierce sense of betrayal is waning, yet he feels suddenly sluggish, and inhales again, surrounded by everything he's denied himself out of spite. He wonders vaguely if Charles will return and find him like this. Then, he decides, he doesn't care.

***

In the following weeks, Charles' bed and apartment become Erik's. Their scents mingle in the sheets and slight touches of another occupant begin to pop up. He immerses himself in what Charles left behind and inserts himself viciously into the memory, denying the plain truth, even as break ends and January soons become February.

Valentine's Day creeps in and Erik buys a dozen roses and abox of chocolate for his absentee "roommate."

By the time March comes, the flowers have wilted and the desiccated petals fallen in a loose circle around the vase. But Erik can't bring himself to throw them out. The water grows murky and brown, yet Erik simply adds fresh water when necessary and shifts the remaining buds toward the artificial light.

He becomes intimately familiar with each of Charles' records, even purchases a few more he feels the geneticist would enjoy. The collection grows steadily, yet Erik keeps going back to a pristine Ella Fitzgerald record whose packaging has begun to show signs of wear and tear.

" _Moonlight, becomes you, it goes with your hair  
You certainly know the right thing to wear  
Moonlight becomes you, I'm thrilled at the sight  
And I could get so romantic tonight_

 _You're all dressed up to go dreaming  
Now don't tell me I'm wrong  
And what a night to go dreaming  
Mind, if I tag along?_

 _If I say, I love you, I want you to know  
It's not just because there's moonlight, although  
Moonlight becomes you so_”

The pale glow of the moon filters in through the cracked curtains, the shadow of the bobbing needle dancing across the living room floor. Erik imagines, once again, that Charles is just in the other room, singing along.

  
**XIX.**   


_Pale fingers drift across the keys of a grand piano, blending in against the ivory. His voice is sweet and gentle like spring rain and his eyes are closed, long, curling lashes casting thin shadows along flushed cheeks like the branches of a tree._

 _Erik watches from a small, white couch, feeling almost voyeuristic as Charles plays. The tune isn’t anything familiar, but it obviously comes easily to the other man, and its beauty is unparalleled. The dark-haired creature’s mouth takes to the foreign tongue with a lovely ease, and Erik picks out words he knows. Something in the back of his mind says Charles knows he’s there, but simply chooses not to acknowledge him._

 _Which is alright._

 _The heady scents of newly-blossomed flowers and the crispness of a receding winter drifts in through the open French windows, filling the room with its aroma._

 _“You’re pathetic you know,” Charles states, his fingers never ceasing to move across the keys, though the tune has changed dramatically. “You rejected me, let’s never forget that. You’re chasing ghosts.” He croons the last bit, his grin absolutely patronizing._

 _Erik swallows thickly, but never moves, more or less pinned to the spot._

 _“Stupid little boy.” Charles chuckles and finally opens his eyes, the blue cool and pregnant with distaste. “You don’t know what you want, do you?”_

 _“I do, now.”_

 _“Now. Of course you know **now**. That’s the miracle of hindsight, isn’t it?” _

_“Yes, but—”_

 _“No, no Erik. You can’t fix this now. I very much doubt anyone can.”_

 _“What happened to your words of forgiveness?”_

 _“Yes, well, everything works out better in the hypothetical sense, doesn’t it?” Charles chuckles and closes his eyes again, cutting off anything Erik could have said._


	5. Chapter 5

  
**XX.**   


Something changed in the time between the time he fell asleep and now when the dawn is rousing him none too gently. Erik glances around Charles' bedroom, freezing at the shadowy lump taking up a small portion of the bed. At first, all he registers is a vaguely humanoid outline, then thin rings of blue, lilywhite flesh with dark waves slashing across it, a smudge of crimson. A familiar, powerful scent, fresher than that on the pillows.

"Charles." He blinks slowly and reaches out, needing to know the other man isn't a mound of pillows his sleepy mind colored in beloved hues.

"Hello, love." The warm, soft flesh beneath his hand is real, slightly sticky with sweat, but real.

"What are you...?"

"I live here, remember? I ought to ask you that. Imagine my surprise--" But Erik doesn't care to think anything of Charles' surprise as he pounces. The smaller of the two is crushed into the mattress under his weight, and his mouth is ripe for plundering. Which Erik takes advantage of, plunging his tongue past those sweet, parted lips and melding their mouths together. Charles still tastes the same as he did during their morning trysts: of his morning tea and mint from his toothpaste mixed with the sweetness that was undeniably Charles Xavier.

 _Not so easily, Erik_. The voice is gently poisonous, and Erik recoils as if Charles were suddenly made of acidic needles.

"No." Charles shakes his head and sits up slowly. "You don't get to leave me and come back full force like that."

"But you love me," Erik responds dumbly, unable to process anything else.

"Yes, well, I have a penchant for hurting those I love." He smiles and fixes his hair. "Now, I think it's time for you to go."

"We need to--"

" _Now_." Erik flinches, but gathers himself, glancing repeatedly at Charles as the other man bustles about his kitchen as if he were never away. In the months since they last saw each other, Charles' hair has grown, falling in unruly waves brushed behind his pale ears. He looks thinner, and shadows like shiners ring his eyes, all the bluer for it.

"I'll see you," he states as the door is swinging shut, catching Charles' lofty "naturally" before it clicked into place.

***

Charles settles back into campus life with ease. His return floods the rumor mill with gossip about where he may have been, why he left and everything in between. Shrewd students pick up the frostiness between the professors and the most prevalent rumor is that the genetics professor suffered a psychotic break after the end of their love affair and went away to an asylum.

For his part, Charles floats above all of this with the grace of a swan princess. He teaches his classes with an unprecedented flair that quickly catapults him to popularity amongst students. They flock to him with glee and brag about how "cool" spending time with the young professor is. Charles flirts like a frat boy and indulges in evenings spent out at pubs with older students and colleagues.

Erik swings by the pool daily, always praying to catch sight of his silverfish, but only glimpses that slim body doing laps on Tuesdays later than usual.

Charles' return slowly brings about that of X. Nearly a month after his explosion back onto campus life, the papers are splashed with X's latest kill, a middle-aged blue-collar worker, his artfully mutilated corpse discovered by the wharf. This time, though, there are no notes. No vein of communication severed into openness, as if Charles had successfully cauterized the rivers of blood that brought their twisted minds into an ocean of harmonious comingling.

And Erik misses him.

His gut twists and roils every time they cross paths, watching Charles blithely go about as if they were strangers, as if he'd never sunk to those pretty knees and wrapped his lusty mouth around Erik's cock and taken him in so deep his nose became intimately acquainted with his pubic hair. As if he'd never repeated Erik's name like a vulgar, blasphemous prayer as he came onto the other man's fingers, or bent over while Erik's tongue fucked him where his cock could not. And the more Erik thinks about it, the more furious he becomes. He pores over X's correspondence, over Charles' whispered words, and decides the affection couldn't be so easily destroyed.

So he does what any self-respecting man would do: he courts him in a reservedly shameless manner.

It starts with flowers delivered in the middle of Charles' lectures, blood red roses intermixed with blue and baby's breath in elegant vases, each with a hand-penned note. The first day he finds the roses stuffed in the mail slot of his office with an achingly polite note commending the sentiment but imploring him to do away with his misguided affections. The second is much the same, the third and fourth following a similar pattern. Instead of reigning in his advances, however, Erik gets more creative, always sure to make them either covert or only for Charles' eyes.

He sends a singing telegram to his apartment one night, laden with chocolate, balloons and flowers, all of which are returned the next day. But it places him back on Charles' radar.

Instead of willfully ignoring Erik during their encounters, he takes to glaring at him as if the taller man had killed his mother.

Erik kills with purpose to compound the "sweet" gifts. He smiles slightly, looming over the young woman and dragging the tip of his blade along her arm.

"My sweetheart is going to love this," he announces conversationally, digging it into muscle and smirking at her strangled wail. "He's quite a lover of 'art', thinks I'm not 'artful' enough in my killing." He shrugs. "He's stubborn, too, my Charles. Principled, for a murderer." A neat curlicue stands out against her sheet-white skin. "And exquisite. Prettiest thing you'll ever see. He's like a doll."

"He sounds like a sick fuck," the girl bites out, and Erik sighs.

"And I was trying to be polite." His sigh sends the blade ramming through her abdomen, sailing through blood and tissue and into her vocal chords. Her strangled rasp makes him smile. Less hassle.

Charles will love this one.

  
**XXI.**   


Sweat drips down the back of his neck, curling the tips of his hair into wild snarls that bounce and sway with his constant springing. Up. Down. Up. Down. His breath comes out in gasps, fogging the area in front of his sweat-slicked, flushed face. Each breath is painfully audible in the barely-dawn stillness, much like the steady slapping.

“C’mon,” he breathes out, eyes squeezing shut before flinging back open.

The ‘WALK’ signal lances through the semi-darkness and Charles takes off across the crosswalk, more gliding than jogging. Cloud-gray sweatpants cling loosely to his skinny legs and an oversized matching sweater engulfs his small body. A frosty wind nips at the tip of his cherry red nose, but Charles only pushes himself harder, faster.

Storefronts and street signs fly by in a blur and he concentrates solely on the whistling in his ears, too wrapped up in his pinprick of a world to hear his companion until stopping at yet another light. Which is when someone else’s hard breathing catches his attention.

Erik dons an outfit similar to his own, his hair a mess and sticking to his forehead.

“What in the hell, Erik?” He demands, rounding on the other man with fury flickering to life in his eyes.

“Good morning, Charles.”

“Fuck you.”

Erik chuckles, the vulgarity not sounding quite right coming from Charles.

“When will you leave me alone?” The quiet desperation in his voice is enough to give Erik pause. “Jesus, Erik, just _stop_. Just…stop.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because it’s ruined!”

“I want to fix it.”

“You can’t!”

“And why not?”

“Because you can’t just… _fix_ us. It’s not that simple, Erik!”

“I love you.”

“Well that isn’t good enough!”

Erik's brows furrow. "W-What?"

"You heard me. It isn't enough, not now." Charles shakes his head, eyes welling with unshed tears. "I can't just dedicate myself so fully knowing you may leave me in anger."

"Charles...I wouldn't--"

"I'll see you around, Erik."

"Wait!" Charles sighs.

" _What?_ "

"Don't you want to...try? What's life without risks, Charles? If we all walked around in little padded bubbles never colliding with each other, with chaos, what's the point of living? We're in love, so love me. Don't be afraid of maybes, take a chance. I could be the best decision you ever make."

"I thought that before."

"Fuck 'before'. What's the past to us? We, men like us, live for the moment, regardless of past or future! If I kissed you here I wouldn't worry about being persecuted by the narrow-minded people we're surrounded by in the future, I would lose myself in you. Why can't you lose yourself in me?"

"Erik..."

"Charles, we could be perfection. Your art, my ragged edges. Together. We want the same thing. Let me love you, Charles Xavier."

Charles stares at him, eyes misty but otherwise unreadable. "I'm insatiable."

"As am I."

"And I hate dogs."

"I've always seen myself as more of a cat person."

"I like post-coitus cuddling."

"I can cuddle."

"I'm a masochist."

"I'm a sadist."

"I love you."

"No shit."

  
**XXII.**   


Charles, it turns out, is not only insatiable but also completely shameless. He clings to Erik's hand on their outings and makes any excuse to perch upon his lap as if it were a stool. He scoffs at the lens of the time, blue eyes dancing with amusement at the blatant disgust of others. If Erik didn't know him better, he would call Charles reckless, but he has enough intuition to recognize a true predator. Charles Xavier is a unique beast wearing the guise of a harmless songbird, picking at the bars of a gilded cage, turning on the charm of those innocent cobalt pools and trilling to the world that he's harmless.

It's what constantly strikes Erik about his seemingly bumbling, pacifist of a lover. He knows himself to be physically dominant, the one eyes would immediately peg as the "dangerous" one. But he wonders.

Something beneath Charles' sweet voice and gleaming eyes shifts like an eel in a pond, serenely menacing. But when he tries to pick it apart, the thought slips away and all he can focus on is the curve of Charles' backside when he bends to retrieve a lost pen, or the halo of freckles across his narrow shoulders. Sometimes he feels his attention being tugged away, but that detail is quickly cut away, the threads of his consciousness woven back together, as if the curiosity had never existed.

***

"I like this one," Charles announces, throwing his meager weight on to one of the kitchen counters "We'll move in tomorrow, yes?"

He tosses Erik an adoring smile and looks at the manager of the apartment building. The woman begins to protest, but Charles' tinkling laugh cuts her off. "Yes, tomorrow it is. This one is perfect for us, don't you think my love?"

"Yes, dear heart. Perfection." Erik smiles complacently and Charles practically glows, pulling Erik between his legs to kiss his breath away. The woman makes a noise.

"We don't want your kind here," she sneers. "This 'queer life' seems popular with you young people but I ain't supportin' it. Y'all can just--"

"Hush." Charles' fingers slip to his temple and he stares back at the woman. His eyes are a placid blue, but his smile is devilish. "You say that but I know your mind. You wouldn't be opposed to watching Erik take me right here, would you? And he will."

"Charles you're an exhibitionist."

"But not now." He presses his lips to the curve of Erik's jaw. "As much as I do love a good show, some things are sacred."

"Good to know."

"Would you like to see another trick?" Charles grins and Erik assents. If nothing else, his lover has the power of persuasion in ways he can't begin to understand. Bright as a summer morning, Charles lifts his foot, angling his boot-clad toe toward the floor. "Lick my boot." His voice is a sensuous purr, and the woman takes a wobbling step forward. Then another and two, three more before kneeling before the chuckling Charles. Without a moment's hesitation, her tongue darts out, licking a wide stripe across the thick sole of his shoe. Charles looks up at Erik, self-satisfied as ever. "Good, isn't it?"

"Brilliant."

"Yes, I'm a work of art, exquisite." Charles giggles and rams the toe of his boot into the prone woman's nose, sending her flying back, a sickening _crunch_ followed by the spurt of blood from her nose. He regards Erik through his lashes, more or less glowing with glee. "Tomorrow, then?"

"I'll buy boxes tonight."

  
**XXIII.**   


There’s a definite chill in the air, evenings still winter-cold despite the foretelling of spring. The young man’s sneakers slap against the pavement, disjointed, staccato. He has a pronounced limp from a cast weighting down his right leg. Erik isn’t sure what drives the man down an alleyway only lit by a single, flickering light at the end.

Perhaps hubris, imagining even in a crippled state he could fend off any attackers.

Perhaps simple faith in humanity, believing no one would attack someone like that.

It’s irrelevant, he decides, taking a long drag of Charles’ elegant, hand-rolled cigarette. The Englishman leans against Erik, twirling a gleaming knife in his hands, tossing it up and threading it through his spread fingers. His body, however, is taut as a bowstring, poised like a readied arrow.

He strikes with the deadly efficiency of a viper.

"'Scuse me." The man stops and Charles wiggles his fingers, sauntering forth, circling him, a miniature tiger sizing up its larger prey.

"Can I help you?"

Charles' fingers ghost across his temples. "Come in here with me?" And of course the man trails Charles as if the slender beauty is the pied piper.

The room off the alley is small, nondescript, likely a storage area in the days. Erik follows after them, fusing the lock with a twitch of his finger.

"Learn well," Charles singsongs, smiling at his frozen victim. "I'm going to teach you finesse." He lashes out without warning, deft and graceful. A line of gleaming crimson cuts the man's cheekbone. This snaps the man out of his trance.

The struggle is so brief Erik only registers a flurry of motion and the dull _thud_ when Charles subdues the man via bodily shoving him down. One small foot rests casually on the man's trachea and Charles regards Erik again.

"One of your main issues is this: you see death as the endgame. 'Yay! They died, whoo me.' But let me tell you. When death is simply _how_ it ends, finally, to immortalize the art, that is the true vision of the artful executioner. Play with your food, I dare you."

Charles is already tracing a complex pattern of waves and sea foliage on the man's abdomen, his shirt hacked away. "You see?" He slides one brilliantly pale finger along his handiwork, pressing it past the delicate layers of skin and into the muscle. Charles holds out the blade, still enamored by his discoveries. "You try."

Erik is clumsy, his hand-carved images crude and jerky where Charles' could have a travelling exhibition in museums. Charles hums a few bars of a new jazz tune he picked up from the local record store, watching with the practiced hawk gaze of a professor. The man coughs, wet and thick, body racked by the throes of death. Blood surrounds him like a crimson halo, leaking into cracks in the stone.

Charles grins, holding out his hand for the blade. Erik moves away watching and listening to his lover decorating the man's chest. He steps back, grinning at his handiwork. A thick 'X' stands out against the waxy flesh, surrounded by a delicate filigree of vines and blooming flowers. Between the branches of the X is a looping 'L', nearly disguised as part of the twisting framework.

"There we are." Charles smiles, contented and proud. "Absolute..."

"Perfection."

***

Blood drips out of Charles' hair, from the stained tips of his fingers. It turns the water a pale pink, the steam smelling strongly of metal and Charles' kiwi shampoo. Moisture beads on his reddening flesh and Erik slips his own blood-soaked hands on the recently-scrubbed, skin of his bare abdomen, streaking it with a violent red.

"I just cleaned that," he admonishes lightly, staring at their reflections, head cocked to the side, naked bodies pressed together, barely air separating their slick skin.

"You look better like this," Erik pulls Charles' hands away from the steady stream of scalding water, trailing the incarnadine stain up Charles' heat-stung arms and to his warm, damp chest. His index finger extends, tracing a thick 'E' over his heart.

"How very accurate," Charles mumbles, circling the E with an idle finger, smiling back at their mirror-selves. He laces his fingers together behind Erik’s head, thumbs alternately rumpling and smoothing the taller man’s hair.

They stare at one another via looking glass for an indeterminate amount of time. Two men, each desperately clinging to the other, colored by the blood of innocents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, a million and one thanks to my beautiful Guru for reading over this and helping me along with her amazing words of encouragement and love and support. All of your comments are so loved and appreciated and they give me the warm and fuzzies <3 I'm so glad I've been able to stir some sympathy (and empathy in some cases) in you guys for killers, that means a job well done to me :D  
> Next chapter, more Kurt!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6, a.k.a., the Tome.  
> With more Kurt, as promised~  
> All of the thanks to my Lovesong for always being my cheerleader, and all of your awesome comments that make me insides turn to mush.

**XXIV.**

 

“So, Erik, the buzz around town is you and Professor Creampuff are, ah, shacking up. You know, dancing the dirty tango, doing the deed, taking a roll in the hay, hanky panky, y’know.” Jason smiles through the thick cloud of acrid, blue smoke, his eyes glinting, pleased at having found a decent nugget of gossip to sink his claws into.

 

Erik sighs. “It’s more than that. We’re…together.”

 

“’Together’, together? As in illegally committed?”

 

“Yes, as in illegally committed.” Erik can’t help rolling his eyes and wonders, not for the first time, why he’s friends with a man like Jason Wyngarde, then remembers why and shakes his head.

 

“What’s he like?”

 

“Completely intolerable.”

 

“Well that isn’t exactly what I expected from the manly half of what I hear is the campus’ star couple.”

 

Erik shrugs. “You asked, I answered honestly.”

 

“Explain what makes a little flit like Charles Xavier so ‘intolerable’.” He leans forward almost conspiratorially, his impressive muttonchops devouring his knuckles as he rests his cheek upon them.

 

“He…” Erik takes a moment to gather himself. “For one, you don’t understand how Charles…ticks. Even I really don’t, and he loves me, but he does… _things_. Thingshe knows for a fact drive me crazy.  Like he’s trying to get a rise out of me, pushing my buttons.”

 

“Like…?”

 

“Well, he uses my toothbrush, to name one, knowing how weird I am about it, then just laughs it off with something stupid like ‘oh Erik your teeth always end up in my mouth anyway’ and then he just skips the fuck out like a goddamn fairy princess. He’s a horrible flirt and he knows he’s doing it. He knows he’s pushing my buttons but he just _does_ it. It’s all just little, annoying…shit. Stupid, insignificant things that needle at me.”

 

“Go on…”

 

“Let me think.” Erik closes his eyes, then snaps his fingers. “He’s completely inconsiderate. Makes himself complete meals while I’m sleeping then just says ‘oh, Erik, did you want some?’ but then complains about how cold his food is going to be when he finishes. God, sometimes I want to tear his fucking throat out. Not to mention Charles Xavier is a cocky bastard, fucking brilliant but arrogant as all fuck. And where does he get off looking like that? Like—like goddamn Snow White come to life and magically popped into a male body.” Erik grumbles out the words, nearly seething.

 

“Sounds to me like you’re crazy about him.” Jason chuckles and flicks the end of his cigarette, ashes drifting to the elegant glass table beneath his elbows. “Completely in love.”

 

“Well of course I am.”

 

“You see all his flaws but you love him anyway, it’s cute. Quaint, even.” Jason grins. “Is he…?”

 

“Mutant?” Their voices have dropped considerably, and Erik leans forward when the mustached man nods. “I don’t know. He hasn’t shown signs, though he is rather intuitive…maybe a weak empath.” 

 

“How interesting. A mutant supremacist dating a potential non-mutant. How very romance novel-esque.”

 

“Yes, completely.” Erik rolls his eyes and sighs. “He’s got me wrapped around his fingers. It’s hopeless by now.”

 

“At least you’re man enough to admit it.”

 

“I don’t feel very manly.”

 

“We so rarely do.” He looks contemplative. "So when do I get to meet the old ball and chain?"

 

"There he is now."

 

Charles gleams like a newly minted coin and his smile is bright. Something like elegance pours off him as he saunters down the darkening street, a hand-rolled cigarette encased in a slender, jade holder held loosely between two fingers. He's still dressed for work in sensible mahogany slacks with a crisp white dress shirt buttoned to the very top, cinched with a navy blue tie tucked into a well-tailored, slate gray suit jacket.

 

"Please, darling, not in public," he teases loftily, pressing a kiss to Erik's lips before flopping down gracelessly into one of the spindly chairs. It takes a moment for him to regard Jason, but when he does, his prep school bred charm flips up and on to an almost unbearably high wattage. "I apologize for my tardiness, the lecture ran over, then one of my students detained me after class. So very inquisitive, my students. Charles Francis Xavier, pleased to make your acquaintance." With a cordial smile, he thrusts his hand out.

 

"Jason Wyngarde, the pleasure is all mine." He flicks a glance at Erik as he grasps the offered hand, smirking knowingly.

 

Charles leans forward, taking a long drag from the ridiculously ostentatious holder and staring intently at Jason. "Erik, why didn't you introduce us before?" A slow smile curves that scarlet expanse of a mouth. "He's lovely."

 **XXV**.

 

"Come now, darling, don't be a grouch." Charles presses his fingers into Erik's cheeks, forcing them into a cruel parody of a smile. "He's my nephew, practically my son, and he's turning two. Every birthday is important at this age." A small pout pushes Charles' rosy lips out and Erik sighs.

 

"Fine. We'll go to your party."

 

"Brilliant!"

 

***

 

Charles' nephew is blue.

 

The boy has startlingly sunny eyes and a shock of ink black hair, but most importantly: the boy is _blue_. Blue with a tail hell-bent on stabbing everyone but himself. A _blue_ tail. His cheeks are soft and round, his little tummy pudgy and distended as children's normally are. 

 

But unlike normal children, Charles' nephew is vibrantly azure.

 

The man whose arms he’s currently enshrined in is tall, yet unassuming. His light brown hair is short and messy, glasses askew and something like exhaustion plays on the corners of his eyes. The man Erik assumes is the little boy’s father bounces the fussy creature ineffectively, surrounded by other children with wide, heartbroken eyes.

 

“We didn’t mean t’ upset Kurt,” one is explaining, a coffee-with-cream skinned little girl with startlingly white hair and dark eyes. “I was just trying to ‘splain the rules of hide-and-seek with now powers.” She, too, looks near tears when Charles the Child Wrangler steps in.

 

“Kurtie-pie,” he coos at the now-squalling boy, holding out his arms, face a mask of innocent adoration. “Why so fussy, sweet? Come to Uncle Charles.” The baby, Kurt, stops mid-scream and rubs a dimpled fist across his eyes before letting out a shrill giggle, tale lashing back and forth. With a loud _crack_ , the boy disappears in a haze of curling cobalt smoke, reappearing seconds later in Charles’ arms.

 

“Chale!” he squeals, clapping his little hands together before smacking them against Charles’ pale cheeks.

 

“Happy birthday, sweetheart.” He presses a kiss to a smooth forehead and one to each cheek. “No more crying, yes? We must be fair if we’re going to play with the others, remember?”

 

Kurt makes a face, sticking out a bright pink tongue and scowling.

 

“No,” Charles rebukes him gently. “Fair is fair. Play like we play. No powers, it isn’t fair. And you must be a good sport…even if it is your birthday.”

 

“No!”

 

“Yes.” Charles’ eyes ice over and he fixes his nephew with a stern look. “You shall play fair or not at all. Who wants to play with a cheater?”

 

He gazes at the other children, all of whom are shaking their heads violently.

 

“You see? Now apologize to your friends and go scamper off.” Without further ado, he sets the now-toddler on his unsteady legs and gives his diapered behind a pat. The boy squeezes Charles’ skinny legs before scampering off to play with the other children.

 

“Not it!” He’s hollering, and Charles giggles, turning to glance at Erik over his shoulder.

 

"Erik, my love?" He raises a brow, the familiar-foreign voice in Erik’s head tittering and curling somehow… _tighter_ around his thoughts. Like an embrace.

 

“A word?” He struggles out, reaching out to Charles, who quickly bridges the gap between them, allowing his forearm to be grasped a little rougher than it should be, held hard enough to bruise. Serene as a botanical display, he trails Erik, allowing the taller man to press him against a wall, left forearm pressing into the delicate line of his throat, allowing little room to maneuver.

 

 _Darling, you’re using your superior height and strength against me_. Charles’ voice is clear as day, but his scarlet curve of a mouth hasn’t moved except to widen his close-lipped smirk. _And I rather think now is not the time for your asphyxiation fantasies_.

 

“You were in my head,” Erik touches his temple, eyes widening.

 

 _You have your tricks, I have mine_. Charles’ grin is sickeningly sweet and adoring. _Isn’t that right, my little metal-wielder?_ An image of himself throwing a lead pipe through a victim that had managed to hobble somewhat away with nothing more than a flick of his index finger flashes across the forefront of his mind.

 

“You’re a telepath.” Somehow, Erik’s voice comes out far more incredulous than intended.

 

“I am.” A dark swirl of _something_ coalesces and undulates in that clear blue, but Erik loses his train of thought after a moment, and all he can focus on is _Charles_. “Are you in my head?”

 

“Always.” His delicate, twink of a lover is completely shameless, streaking color through Erik’s thoughts, his tone warm and pleasant. “Your mind is nice.”

 

“For how long?”

 

“Before the beginning.”

 

“I don’t remember.”

 

“I know.” 

 

“You… _know_? How do you know?”

 

“I can read your mind, of course.” Charles giggles, looping his slim fingers around Erik’s arm and removing it from his throat. He holds onto it, though, kissing the inside of his wrist, up the skin, over the number, and Erik recoils as if burned.

 

“Don’t.”

 

For a moment, Charles looks scandalized, but it passes almost immediately, replaced with a careful blankness.

 

 _214782…_ his mental voice is pensive, but Erik doesn’t indulge him. _Did it hurt very much?_

 

“It was a long time ago.”

 

 _You don’t forget so easily what happened there_.

 

“I barely remember getting… _this_.” He makes a sweeping gesture over the strip of skin, avoiding Charles’ eyes. “Like I said, it was a long time ago. And I don’t want to talk about it right now. You’re a _telepath_.”

 

Charles laughs easily. “I am.”

 

“And your nephew…is blue.”

 

“He can teleport. As you saw.”

 

“That man with the glasses…”

 

“My brother.” Charles shrugs. “He’s a mutant, too. Though not quite so ‘mutant and proud’.”

 

“Where’s his mother?”

 

“Dead.” The tone of his response is cool and flat, begging off further conversation. “Now, this day is about my nephew, not the intricacies of—”

 

“But his name is McCoy.”

 

Charles’ expression twists into something dark and hateful that is quickly smoothed over by an amiable smile.

 

“We’re step-brothers. His father was McCoy, mine was Xavier. _Now_. This is not about the intricacies of my family tree, but my nephew. And I would rather like to be with him.” Easily as a minnow, Charles slips out from between Erik and the wall, gliding into the living room and the heart of the chaos.

 

When Erik looks up, he notices the bespectacled man staring at him, lips turned down into a deep frown.

 

“Can I help you?”

 

The man flounders a moment before sidling over. “Hank McCoy,” he announces by way of greeting, thrusting his hand out.

 

“Erik Lehnsherr.” He shakes the proffered hand.  “So you’re Charles’ brother.”

 

Hank’s eyebrows soar upward, but he quickly composes himself. “I am.”

 

“Good to meet you.”

 

“And you.” He looks as if he has something of the utmost importance to say, but doesn’t know if he should say it. Quickly, he hazards a glance at Charles, but the telepath is occupied with counting to find the children spread about the apartment. “I need you to trust me.”

 

“I don’t—”

 

“ _Please_.”

 

“What do you need me to do?”

 

“Think of something, something very loud but not enough to draw Charles’ attention, just…bring it to the forefront of your mind, okay? Then when I tell you what I’m about to tell you, I want you to cloak it. Don’t think about it in his presence, or when you feel him. In fact, try not to think about it at all. Just know it.”

 

“O…kay.”

 

“Are you thinking of it?” Erik screws his face in concentration, bringing a memory of Charles going down on him at their park to mind, figuring that will cover whatever Charles’ skittish brother has to say.

 

“Yes.”

 

Hank glances at Charles again, swallowing nervously. “You need to leave Charles. He’s dangerous.”

 

Erik snorts. “I know that.”

 

“He’s worse than you think. Something in him is just…off. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but something inside him is broken and likely irreparable. He’ll get in your head and twist up your thoughts and your feelings and—”

 

“Haaaa-aaaaank!” Charles’ voice is a light song, cutting through the air. They turn as one and the Englishman is wiggling his fingers, cordial and smiling. “Be a love and boil me some water? I could _kill_ for a cup of tea right now. Rose would be marvelous, you know how I like it.” Hank flinches and scuttles to the kitchen, Charles’ eyes following him the whole way. 

 

 **XXVI**.

 

“Like this.” Charles’ voice is soft, guiding the knife in Erik's hand across his skin with just enough pressure to elicit a hiss from, tiny droplets of blood beginning to bead in the edges of the small incision. Erik's eyes flash, watching, rapt, as the scarlet laceration drips and bleeds, rolling across the pale flesh of Charles' abdomen.

 

“Look at you.” He manages to murmur around the spike of desire lancing through them both, unsure of its origin. Charles grins, hips jerking forward the tiniest bit, increasing the pressure. His hands shake, a small noise drawing from the back of his throat.

 

“Mm, s'good, isn't it?” He breaths, lids fluttering at the heat slicing through him as brightly as the pain.

 

”Perfection,” Erik hisses, digging slightly deeper, watching the silver blade penetrate layers of beloved skin. He watches with a spectator's distracted control, but a participant's involved desire. He listens as a broken, hoarse whimper is wrenched from Charles' mouth - as hot as the blood slicking his abdomen. He exhales in a rush, forehead dropping to Erik's shoulder, choking.

 

“Can you feel it?” He gasps, squirming and causing the knife tip to tear at his flesh just the tiniest bit. _The power?_

A minute, half-choked groan breaks past the hard line of Erik's mouth. "Yes, god, _yes_ Charles. "

 

He pushes the blade up along the slightly defined line of Charles' abdomen, listening to the wet tear of flesh - cutting through layers of skin like butter and barely skimming flat, quivering muscle.

 

Charles keens, arching and pressing his face into Erik's neck as hot pain lances through him, slamming into Erik in a telepathic wave. He curses softly, baring his teeth and impulsively biting down on the skin of Erik's throat, who grunts and tilts his head the slightest bit, almost an invitation. His knees shake, on the brink of giving out with each tremor that wracks through him.  One long arm wraps carefully around Charles' slender waist, massaging the jutting bone of his hip.

 

“Too much?” Erik coos, digging teasingly at the muscle, just barely scraping the surface.

 

Charles pulls his head back enough to utter, “I can't - ah - tell.” He whimpers, teeth scraping Erik's neck. He withdraws his hands from the knife, one sliding along Erik's forearm to cup his elbow and the other burying itself frantically into the back of the taller man's hair.

 

"Fuck- " Charles growls, eyes clenched, and Erik chuckles, kissing the side of Charles' head, a brief moment of tenderness before flicking out the knife with a ragged, wet _schluck_.

 

“Mmm...” He taps the flat of it against Charles' cheek, tracing a crimson outline of swirls. "Here?" A mocking smile and another brief kiss to the temple. Charles groans, low in his throat, legs wobbling. His head tilts, tongue darting out to lap languidly along the knife.

 

"Mmm," He purrs in soft mimicry, grinning. 

 

A twist of despair and desire crosses Erik's face and his hand twitches, biting into Charles' stained cheek in a thin, graceless line. He curses it, letting the knife fall forgotten as he leans in to kiss apology along the ragged cut. Charles hisses, withdrawing his hand from Erik's elbow to press it against his gut. He’s enjoying this far too much, but each second that passes feels like his energy is slowly draining from him. Ignoring it, Charles turns his head, capturing Erik's lips with his own, biting into the kiss with vigor.

 

There’s a touch of gentleness to Erik's kiss, something still burning with _sorry so sorry_ , his fingers tracing the cut with a near reverence. Something so perfect marring that lovely face.

 

He feels a resentment toward it, toward himself for wanting nothing more than to lap up the blood there, to see if it would taste different than that which spilled from his torso or arms. But what was new about that desire? To devour Charles whole, to shove him up inside his hollow chest cavity and pull him out when he saw fit.

 

Charles, however, doesn't seem too fond of the gentle approach, opening his mouth and darting his tongue forward to wet his and Erik's lips. He arches up, a surge of blood coming from his wound and pooling over his fingers, dripping to the floor. The scent is a sharp tang to their noses, an exhilarating rush coupled with the burning, wrenching agony that shoots through Charles’ every nerve. He bites down on Erik's lip, drawing it into his mouth and suckling before gnashing his teeth and splitting the skin open, suckling blood straight from the wound.

 

And Erik, Erik is moaning at the feeling of Charles pulling, taking from him. A part of him becoming part of Charles. He surges forward with an almost animal grunt, shifting and smashing Charles into the nearest vertical surface, regardless of any protrusions or bruising that may result. With Charles' teeth otherwise occupied, Erik' questing tongue takes the chance to massage along the other man's gums, slip past the scant opening his lower lip provided.

 

Charles releases a soft gurgling noise, blood spurting from his wound at the action. He keens, trying to lift a leg to at least climb up Erik's body, but they wouldn't cooperate—too weak from blood loss and going into shock. His limbs tremble, hissing out a curse into Erik's mouth and using the hand in Erik's hair to drag him even closer. His teeth clack against the other man's, tongue running through the small gash in his lip and forcing it to widen - to bleed more as he spreads the coppery liquid between their mouths, even pushing it back through Erik's lips once he's tasted his fill.

 

Erik takes a step back, grasping the backs of Charles' knees and hitching them around his waist before ramming his lover back into the wall. He hisses and cracks one eye to watch the scarlet stain Charles' pretty white teeth and his pretty white skin, dripping down his chin and staining his pretty white shirt.

 

The taste of his own iron-filled blood isn't nearly as satisfying as Charles' but he gulps it down with the zeal of a shark near a gushing carcass. Fingers that had once supported now grasp Charles' hips and squeeze, wanting to bruise, wanting to feel that groan as the bones resisted breaking, cracking, but coming so close. Charles shrieks the tiniest bit in surprise, bloodied hand flying up to join its partner around Erik's neck.

 

He whimpers, gaining enough control of his body to thrust against Erik. He can feel his body screaming in protest, begging for reprieve, to be healed and kept from harm. Charles ignores it, nails digging into Erik's scalp with his right hand smearing blood everywhere.

 

"Erik..." He gasps, dragging the other man down for another violent kiss, biting at his lips once more and kneading the injured flesh between his teeth to coax out a bit more blood. "Upstairs?" Charles breathes against Erik's lips, not really caring where they went, as long as there's something more in his near future.

 

"Yes." Erik isn't sure if the words are spoken aloud, but it didn't matter, nothing matters but getting somewhere, anywhere, to relieve the pressure building half in his mind and half in his groin.

 

Somehow, he navigates the stairs to the loft, only stopping to acquaint Charles' back with the banister two or three times before disentangling his little creeper vine and throwing him rather roughly on top of the neatly made bed, standing over him, watching Charles bounce twice and use the momentum to throw himself back with the strength in his arms.

 

His entire lower body is slick with blood, shirt rucked up around his nipples and bare torso torn open, exposing muscle, fat, and cartilage to the elements. Rivulets of crimson stain his skin, trousers darkened from the liquid and all of it glistening with each heave of breath he gives. The front of his trousers is tented, exposing just how much he's enjoying the situation whenever he gives Erik a wanton look and arches against the bed, reaching down to palm himself through his pants. "Erik.." he groans.

 

Erik shivers at the sight laid out before him like a feast for the taking, the blood like a fine vintage, the remains of his clothes like a foil wrapping to a delectable treat he has to tear away and work to get the full enjoyment from. Even his skin, now flushed and sticky from the dried blood is another layer he needs to penetrate to get to what he wants.

 

And he wants it all.

 

Very nearly growling, Erik slaps Charles' hand away, tossing it to the side and climbing to hover over him like some strange, avant garde umbrella. He tongues curiously at Charles' exposed interior, tasting at muscle and fat, twisting through the cuts, up his soft chest and latching onto one pert nipple like a malnourished babe.

 

Charles can't hold back the startled cry that escapes him, hands flying to cup the back of Erik's head and wrenching at his hair violently. Pain shoots through his every nerve, making him tremble and tears reflexively come to his eyes as Erik laves at the tender and damaged skin.

 

"O-ohhh..." He groans, writhing in tandem with each flick of Erik's tongue, only having a chance to breathe whenever the other man finally leaves his injury to explore the rest of his body. He forces his legs up - though they shake violently and scream with the effort - wrapping them around Erik's thighs to try and force their bodies closer.

 

Erik smirks, digging his thumb directly into one of the sizable gashes, reveling in the pain he knows causes Charles.

 

"Not so in control now, hmm?" He nips a loose edge of skin, tugging a little harder than intended, feeling it begin to tear before letting it go and licking at it experimentally.

 

Charles bucks his hips, growling low in his throat and scraping his nails across Erik's scalp. He looks like he wants to argue, to protest that he is always in control, but instead barks out a sound of surprise when Erik bites off another sliver of skin, instantly replacing it with the moist heat of his tongue to soothe the bite.

 

"I'll kill you- " He hisses, breaking off into a whine and thrusting his hips up into Erik in a sudden burst of need.

 

"Shall I poise the knife and you push your very hardest?" Erik teases, hot breath blowing against the torn skin, pressing Charles' hips into the mattress. "I may even help you along, what with your weak little arms." He smirks and tugs off another swatch of skin with some satisfaction, eyes dancing with cool mischief. "My pretty little flit."

 

"I'm sorry," Charles snaps irritably, his erection straining in his trousers to the point where he's rather positive that any blood left in his body had flooded downwards. "Perhaps I'm weak because I'm saving up my energy to fuck you to death." The last words are yelped at the tearing of skin and giving Erik's hair another forceful wrench.

 

Erik laughs, completely unfazed by his lover's annoyance. "I rather think that's the other way around, my wanton little fairy." He unbuttons Charles' tight, stiff bottoms with a torturous slowness, holding that blue-eyed gaze and never letting it go as he slides them down and away. As an almost afterthought, he drops a kiss on Charles' knee before carefully disentangling those grabby little fingers and pushing him back. "Now be a good boy and finish getting that shirt off."

 

"If anyone is the fairy, it’s the one using pet names." Charles points out snidely, fingers grasping into his shirt and tugging it over his head. It sticks around his chin for a moment, but with enough force, Charles wrenches it off to leave his hair in utter disarray. The loss of blood has left his skin a glossy pale color, void of its usual aroused flush save for the reddened skin of his erection.

 

Erik smirks, kissing his way up the inside of Charles' thighs, pressing a close-mouthed butterfly kiss at the tip of his leaking cock, smirking at the immediate reaction.

 

"I love you, you unbearable faggot." He licks a broad strip up the other thigh, humming against the sensitive flesh and nipping it ever so gently. It's true, they both knew it, but Erik can never hold himself accountable for the vulgarities that spill from his lips when held in thrall by the lusty aura Charles gives off during sex.

 

"I prefer the term cockslut, if we must be vulgar and insulting." Charles hisses, releasing a whimper bordering on a bleating cry. His hips jerk upward, cock bouncing from the movement and the need apparent in every twitch of his body.

 

"Mm, god forbid I insult you incorrectly." Erik lets out a breathy laugh, ridding his own body of its garments in a markedly speedier time than he had Charles' trousers. Without preamble, he shoves four fingers at Charles' mouth. "Suck."

 

Charles releases an indignant sound, choking for a moment before adjusting to the intrusion. Saliva pools into the corners of his mouth and his tongue swipes around to smear it along Erik's fingertips. His hands drift down, fisting his cock and slowly stroking it in sync with each suck to Erik's fingertips.

 

Erik groans at the sight before him, his breathing and heart rate increasing, wiggling his fingers before tugging them out. He slaps at Charles' hand half-heartedly before making a split-second decision. Instead of taking the time to stretch his pretty, bird of a lover, he uses his spit-slicked fingers to coat his own straining cock before pushing Charles' legs up, calves on his shoulders and shoving his way into the tight, unprepared entrance.

 

Charles shrieks, hips jerking up at the sudden flash of burning, ripping agony before releasing a long and low moan as he forces himself to relax against the intrusion. His hands clutch at Erik's biceps, nails digging in with ferocity and ripping the flesh beneath him as Charles' hole clenches and unclenches to try and adjust.

 

"Just relax," Erik soothes, stilling all motion for a moment to allow Charles time to adjust, slowly pushing the other man's legs back further, knees barely kissing shoulders. "Relax..." he strokes along one trembling thigh, allowing himself a small, gentle moment of reprieve while his little wildcat adjusts.

 

Charles chokes out a whimper, shuddering as he struggles to breathe through the immediate shock of Erik's abrupt entry. He can feel the clots from his wound reopening, spilling fresh blood in a small pool between his stomach and chest where his body has been nearly bent in half.

 

"E-Erik...." He breathes, forcing his eyes to open and stare up into Erik's face, pupils blown wide.

 

"Good?" Erik toys with the welling blood, lazy as a cat batting at offered milk, not sure if it wants to take it. He smears it in a crude pattern that could be words if one tilts it just so.

 

"Mmmmnnnghh." Charles responds incoherently, nudging his hips up just the tiniest bit to let Erik know that he needs to move. He's already feeling lightheaded - slight vertigo tilting the axis of his world with each second Erik spends inside of him.

 

He most definitely wants to get off before he passes out.

 

Erik dos his best to stifle the laugh bubbling to the surface of his lips, choking it out into a cough-grunt hybrid. With a level gaze, he pulls out almost completely before snapping his hips forward with the elasticity of a new rubber band. His control is barely functioning, and he gives it two thrusts before damning restraint. The thrusting is quick but deep, jerky but smooth.

 

 Charles whines, scratching at Erik's arms and back for purchase and trying to find some semblance of coherency through all of the numbing sensations tearing through him.

 

"Oh God, ohgodohgod." He rambles, hips undulating with each thrust and blood seeping off of his body and into the bed sheets.

 

Erik feels them leave rather than decides to loose a string of curses and vulgar condemnations he would regret if laid bare under the light of the sun. But as it is, he can barely make sense of them himself, and doubts they'd penetrate Charles' almost manic euphoria.

 

 

"H-Harder, Erik!" Charles pleads, near incoherency as each thrust sends him wildly out of his mind and into a daze. He knows it's the lack of blood - but doesn't honestly care when Erik is on him, in him, thrusting with reckless abandon. He reaches trembling arms up to wrap around the back of Erik's neck, dragging him down into a wet, sloppy kiss.

 

The request is nothing short of a command that reverberates through Erik's lust-dazed mind, and who is he to disobey?

 

His thrusts become shorter but the sound of skin smacking against skin is nearly as loud as the crack of a whip in the silence. Everything is the tight heat and Charles crying out his name like an obscene prayer and Erik fighting the heat building in his stomach. It's almost an unspoken rule between them that Charles gets off first, almost always starting a chain reaction that ends with Erik filling the tight channel and both of them moaning like it's a statement the world needed to hear.

 

Charles writhes, heels digging into Erik's back to force him closer to Charles' body until each thrust sends Erik's stomach driving a hot line of friction against his cock. It's enough to drive him to the brink, heat prickling throughout his entire body and muscles trembling with anticipation.

 

"Close - Erik, Erik please." Charles babbles, eyes dilated to a point where there is only the tiniest sliver of blue ringing around his pupils.

 

A low grunt makes its way from Erik's taut mouth and he presses faster, deeper, so sure he'll break the fragile, butterfly of a man beneath him. So sure that pale skin would split irreparably, leaving him with two halves of a man, the fissure beginning at his groin. But he can never deny Charles, it's unthinkable. And he presses on, always on. "Love you. So -- so much."

 

"Forever," Charles'  gasps, just before his back snaps into a bow, arching painfully off the bed as his climax hits him. He cries out in a long, low moan as streaks of cum stain his stomach and Erik's chest. Each pulse sends a raging tremor through Charles' body, leaving nothing behind but a wrecked mess that struggles to do any more than breathe.

 

"We should get you cleaned up," Erik murmurs, watching Charles sink into the mattress.

 

"'n the morning." He yawns out, lazily stroking the ragged edges of the gash in his abdomen.

 

"Charles, you really should--"

 

Erik barely catches the movement of fingers to temple before Charles is murmuring, "go to sleep."

 

 **XXVII**.

 

A cocoon of iridescent warmth envelopes Erik's body, sinking into his skin and filling the surrounding room. His eyelids flutter open slowly, unwilling to break the tranquil bliss of dreamless sleep, and take in the peace of their bedroom. The other side of the bed is empty, but not cold, still pleasantly rumpled, like Charles after a long, strenuous night.

 

Images of the previous night flood back in a wash of sensation and emotion.

 

Charles' blood on the sheets.

 

Kissing him places that had never known touch.

 

"Charles!" Erik wrenches the bed sheets away and scrambles onto his feet, fighting the initial wave of dizziness to rush downstairs where he’s greeted with the sight of Charles’ prominent spine shadowing and rippling beneath his moon pale skin. “Charles, are you—”

 

“Practically perfect in every way, darling.” The shorter man turns and smiles, ruffling his already tousled bedhead and leaning against the stove, showing off his unblemished canvas of a torso.

 

“W-What?” Erik stutters dumbly, staring at the unmarked skin he knows he cut open with the intent of a mortician carrying out an autopsy.

 

“Your friend Jason and I work rather well together, don’t you think?” He grins and winks lasciviously, eyes dancing with the sort of mischief only Charles Xavier and perhaps Loki himself could take pleasure in.

 

“What did you… _how_?”

 

“I’m a _telepath_ , darling. And Jason is an illusionist. Brilliant teacher, really.”

 

Erik stares at his blithe lover blankly, brows knitting together.

 

“Really, love, such an expression is unbecoming.” Charles giggles and dances about the kitchen, collecting the necessary items to make tea with the ease of a lark.

 

“What the fuck, Charles? When I fell asleep you were—”

 

“Honestly, Erik.” Charles’ voice is sharp and cool as a whetted blade. “Do you really think I would let you cut me up like that?” He scoffs. “Jason was…helping me.”

 

“With what?”

 

He sighs and levels Erik a look that could flatten the entire Cascade Range. “Jason was helping me with my illusion crafting. Projecting one that’s foolproof. You were a good candidate. I dug into your desires—sadistic fuck—and he helped me to create the perfect projection. Taught me to do it so I waste less energy on one task. Fascinating, really.”

 

“So you used me as your lab rat.” Erik’s voice is flat.

 

“Precisely.” He shrugs and flips the stove off just as the kettle begins to shrill. “Problem, my love?”

 

“Yes, you can’t—”

 

“Put it in the complaint box.” Charles waves him off with a laugh and frivolous smile. “I have a lecture in thirty, and I’m really in no mood to argue.”

 

“Charles—”

 

 _No._ The telepathic word is a shock to Erik’s system, but he doesn’t protest any further, watching mutely as Charles polishes off his morning muffin and tea before dressing for the day.

 

“How do I look?” He asks, strolling out and doing a full turn, combing back his hair once more for good measure.

 

“Ravishing.”

 

“Lovely. I’ll meet you at the pool at our usual time, yes? Magical.” He presses a kiss to the corner of Erik’s mouth before heading out for the day.

 

By the time he’s leaving for his own class, Erik forgets they came near to arguing at all.

 

 **XXVIII**.

 

“Why didn’t you ever tell me you were a mutant?” Erik leans against the cool of the brick wall and glances down as Charles finishes another set of carvings in his latest find’s arm. The scent of smoke mixes with the tang of fresh blood and the icy cleanness of the night air. Charles glances up, a spatter of crimson speckling his cheek.

 

He’s chuckling, then looking back down.

 

“You never asked.”

 

“But you knew I am.”

 

“Naturally.”

 

“And you weren’t going to tell me? Ever?”

 

“You thought I was an empath. You knew what telepaths were, I figured you would get it eventually. Or it would become clear.” Charles shrugs. “To be honest, I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out when I started speaking in your head.”

 

“I thought that voice sounded familiar.”

 

“You thought correct.”

 

“Are you…always in my head?”

 

“On some level.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“We’re connected, you and I. The ‘red string of fate’ some would call it. I can’t quite explain it, but unless I actively pull out, I’m always in your mind. Sort of. A little part of my mind had sort of…slipped into yours. It’s a subconscious thing.”

 

“So you always know what I’m thinking.”

 

“Not really.” Charles shrugs. “I get the gist of your thoughts, but that’s with anyone. I have to actively listen, it’s just easier with you.”

 

“Interesting.”

 

“Isn’t it?” His smile is brighter than the midday sun and equally warm and pleasant. With a shake of his hands, he stands back to observe his work. “What do you think?”

 

“Very intricate.”

 

“Too much?”

 

“Never.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The illusion-sexiness in the chapter was co-written with the lovely Zimothy who is far too good for me.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize endlessly for the long wait. Break was spent updating as much as possible, then I got grounded all last week and life has just been a big fucking mess. ANYWAY. In happier news, I pretty much think this is my personal best ever in life. AND my lovely husband ladyfassbender on Tumblr made me two beautiful gifsets to go along with this tale~
> 
> One: http://ladyfassbender.tumblr.com/post/13860857252  
> and  
> Two: http://ladyfassbender.tumblr.com/post/15766244453

**XXIX**.

 

 _“Lizzie Borden took an axe_

 _And gave her mother forty whacks._

 _When she saw what she had done_

 _She gave her father forty-one.”_

 

 _A slow, easy smile. Scarlet lips stretched wide, curling at the tips, curling back over stark white teeth and a vulgar tongue._

 _Cool blue, cruel blue, violently cerulean, gleaming like a lighthouse in a small face. Pale face, angelic, too sweet for the singsong of violence._

 _“Hush, now, what will they think?”_

 _“Tell them I’m mad.” Glossy chestnut, wavy chestnut, catching the light and holding it, reflecting it, warm with it._

 _A smack to a round cheek. Rosy, now, heated, swelling and crimson. Lovely crimson. “Don’t be obtuse, child. Have some sense and act properly.”_

 _“Yes, Mummy.”_

 _***_

 _Short fur, soft like down, small, quivering. “Shh, Poppy. Shh, shh, c’mere.” Shaking violently, low growl, snapped teeth. “Bad girl!”_

 _“I don’t know who did it.” Stained fingers, dripping fingers, cold and small._

 _“The poor bitch was hacked to bits.”_

 _“What kind of psycho would do that to an animal?”_

 _“Mummy, why did someone hurt Poppy?”_

 _Disinterest, cold eyes, dead and numbed by drink. What is this child who dares possess his face? “Go to your room.”_

 _***_

 _“Jack and Jill_

 _Went up the hill_

 _To fetch a pail of water._

 _Jack fell down_

 _And broke his crown_

 _And Jill came tumbling after.”_

 _Clasped hands, warm hands, chase me, chase me. Let’s play a game, no power, powers aren’t fair. Pinky swear, spit on it, write your name here in blood._

 _It’s gonna be us against the world!_

 _Just you and me. Carve our names here, put your blood here, this is our place, you and me. You are mine, and I am yours. Blue and yellow, cerulean and marigold, azure and ivory, scarlet and chestnut._

 _“You are mine and I am yours and we won’t need anyone ever again.”_

 

 

 

 **XXX**. 

 

" _Someday I'll wish upon a star_

 _And wake up where the clouds are far_

 _Behind me..._ " Charles' voice is dreamy, eyes locked on their "groovy" new color television, watching Judy Garland move about the small screen with a measure of peace in his eyes. He leans into Erik thoughtlessly when the metal bender sits down, arms slipping around him, all without taking a break from the song.

 

" _Somewhere over the rainbow_

 _Bluebirds fly_

 _Birds fly over the rainbow_

 _Why, then oh why, can't I?_ "

 

"Because I need you here with me," Erik murmurs needlessly, reflexively, kissing the side of Charles' head. The telepath gives him a sappy smile and flushes with delight. They stare at each other a long while, a stab of guilt lancing through Erik as he thinks how he could be holding Charles back.

 

 _Hush, love_. Charles brushes back an errant lock of hair and repositions himself.

 

"Cha--"

 

"Later," he soothes, thumbs making idle circles on Erik's wrists. But Erik loses whatever he'd meant to say by the end of the movie, and finds himself inexplicably between Charles' legs.

 

Not that he minds.

 

____________________

 

When Erik wakes up, Charles is long gone, his side of the bed cold and neat as if the other man had never been there. There’s a note on the bedside table in Charles’ looping scrawl, __

_Lecturing until four, I’ll be home by five._

 _\--Love, Charles_

Erik yawns, looking at the calendar. Thursday. He doesn’t have any classes today, leaving the day yawning ahead of him, open to boundless possibilities of things he could do while Charles is away.

 

He ends up on the couch in his boxers.

 

 **XXXI.**

Very little looks better on Charles Xavier than happiness spawned from love. It makes him gleam and glow like some unholy cross between a newly minted coin and a pregnant woman. It flushes those pretty, pale cheeks with a red only rivaled by that in his full, smiling lips.

 

 _Oh, Emma, you’re a flatterer_. He coos, mind wrapping into the icicle tapestry of her own. Their awareness becomes one, slipping and sliding against each other like two animals familiar to one another reuniting.

 

Charles takes his seat across from Emma, tea already prepared to his usual specifications and still steaming.

 

“Thank you, darling,” he leans across the table to kiss his cheek and Emma, ever the dainty ice queen, receives it with a gracious smile before sitting back, brushing her hands over her ivory skirt.

 

“You look good, sugar,” she regards him down the elegant slope her nose, something maternal edging the look.

 

“ _Merci_ ,” he chuckles and sips experimentally at the tea. “You look as lovely as ever. No older than you were when we went off to college. And somehow lovelier.”

 

“Mm, now who’s the flatterer?”

 

“I always have been.” The younger telepath relaxes into the spindly chair, blue eyes still aware of the happenings around them, but infinitely more at ease than usual.

 

“You’ve been tampering too much,” Emma admonishes gently, the soothingly cool edges of her thoughts seeping into the inflamed, throbbing crux of Charles’.

 

“Out of necessity.” Charles responds immediately, defensive. “My Erik is . . . edgy at times. Don’t want to send him packing,” he mumbles, staring into his cup with something like shame in his eyes. “Besides, you know it’s habit.”

 

“A very poor habit you would do well to get rid of. For the sake of not only your ‘Erik’ but your own mind. You’ll exhaust always buzzing around other people’s minds like a busy little silk spider, stitching everything up, spinning your own little amendments.”

 

“Can’t help it,” Charles mutters, nibbling at his lower lip.

 

“Don’t look so sad, sugar. You know I worry about you.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I wish you would come back. Sebastian misses you. Hell, even _Azazel_ misses you.”

 

A small smile curls those scarlet lips. “I can’t, not now. Erik . . .” he sighs and leans in, eyes turning deadly serious. “Erik is dead-set on killing Sebastian.” The invitation into his mind is unspoken, and a moment later, he can feel Emma’s comforting thoughts turning inquisitive, and he closes his eyes, pulling her into his mind.

 

 _“It’s a lot nicer in here than I remember,” Emma comments, glancing around the placid landscape that serves as Charles’ mental retreat._

 _“I’ve done some housekeeping.” They link fingers, strolling toward the looming shadow of Shaw’s manor._

 _“When did . . . ?”_

 _“It was more home to me than the manor ever was,” Charles shrugs, pushing open the ornately carved front door and smiling. Though similar, the longer Emma glances around, the more she realizes that while the layout and architecture is nearly identical, it’s only **nearly** , minute differences making it all the more Charles’. The path to the library is familiar, and they don’t speak on the way there, gliding easily across the hardwood floor. _

_The library is another area Charles’ personal taste has taken liberties: far larger and grander than the real thing, books going all the way up to the ceiling with multiple floors connected by a twisting staircase. A small, wooden reading table sits before a grand armchair and Charles plucks up the first book from a small stack there, handing it to Emma._

 _It’s fairly new looking, but more in a manner suggesting the content is old but the bindings new. It has no title, and when Emma opens it, she’s stricken by a slew of memories that don’t belong to either telepath, though somehow . . . cut. As if she’s reading the abridged version where only the most important details have been left in._

 _“What—?”_

 _“Brilliant, isn’t it?” Charles grins, clapping his slender hands. “I put it together just for you. So you would get the gist of our issue without all the unnecessary fluff.”_

Emma’s awareness slams into her body before she has the chance to respond. It’s dizzying, like getting off a shoddy carnival ride, and her mind clamors to make sense of and file away the information into one of the many rooms of her personal mental ice castle.

 

“Christ,” she breathes upon gathering herself, staring wonderingly at the other telepath, then processing what she’s learned. “He’s been tracking him all this time.”

 

“What Sebastian did was unnecessary.”

 

“What Sebastian did—”

 

“You weren’t saying the same thing about Kurt and Gabriel.” He snaps, and Emma blanches.

 

“Charles, that’s—”

 

“Emma, please.” He massages the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. “Just . . . tell Sebastian to be careful. This isn’t one of his games or anything of that nature. Erik _will_ find some way to kill him. And I don’t want to have to try to choose between the two.”

 

 **XXXII.**

The knock comes right when the grandfather clock in the small dining room strikes noon. Erik lifts his head, considering ignoring it, since the metal on the knocker is unremarkable and nothing that he remembers. He turns the television down and waits for the man to either get the hint or to have missed the sounds altogether and figure no one is home.

 

Instead, it comes again, more insistent.

 

Once.

 

Twice.

 

Thrice.

 

Then a voice, soft, like trying to whisper through the wood but still be heard. “Erik? It’s Hank, please let me—” the door swings open to reveal Charles’ skittish younger brother, jumping slightly at the sudden movement. He recovers quickly, stepping in and closing the door quickly behind him.

 

“H-Hello, Erik.” Hank wipes at his glasses, coughing.

 

“Hank. Charles isn't here, how can I—?”

 

“I know. I wanted to talk to you, actually.”

 

“Okay, what about?”

 

“Charles, of course.”

 

Erik’s brows furrow. “Charles? What about Charles?”

 

“He isn’t—I know you know about what he _does_ , but it goes so far beyond that. Charles is sick, and angry, and—”

 

“So you’re here to tell me to break up with your brother?”

 

“Charles Xavier isn’t my brother. He doesn’t have a brother.”

 

“What? But he said—”

 

Hank scoffs. “The thing you need to realize very quickly with Charles is that he _says_ a lot of things. He lies. He manipulates, he edits the truth to fit the perception of himself he’s put forth for the viewing of the person at hand. You don’t know him at all.”

 

“Why lie about you being about his brother?”

 

“Because Kurt is his nephew, and if he told you his mother was his sister, you would ask after her. Instead, he said I am his brother, and that Kurt’s mother is dead, no questions to ask.”

 

“So Charles has a sister.”

 

“ _Had_.” There’s a bitter twist to Hank’s mouth as he reaches into his coat pocket, pulling out two small polaroid pictures and handing them to Erik.

 

The first is of a pink-cheeked blond with flowing waves of hair like a lioness, her arm around a younger Charles’ shoulders, grinning at the camera and throwing up a peace sign. The second is of the same—he thinks—girl, but in this her skin is a bright azure, a few shades paler than Kurt’s, and scaled. Her hair is orange-scarlet and tousled, a few locks brushing across ridged brows and into purely yellow eyes, straight white teeth and a bright pink tongue stark contrast to the tone of her skin. Her luminescent gaze is fixed on her brother’s equally radiant one, sun on the sea.

 

“Her name was Raven Xavier, she was Charles’ adopted sister.”

 

“What happened to her?”

 

“Charles killed her.”

 

“What?”

 

“I didn’t stutter.” For once, the skittish man is confident in himself, drawing himself up to his full, considerable, height.

 

“Why would Charles kill his own sister?”

 

Hank snorts, his lip curling down in a sneer. “You really don’t know a thing about Charles Xavier. It isn’t as if the bastard—”

 

“Watch your mouth.”

 

“—would tell me. I found him with her. Of course he tried apologizing, tried crying and begging me to go for help, like she wasn’t already dead.” He laughs, low and bitter. “Of course he knew. I’m sure he felt it the moment she was gone. Manipulative, _mad_ , bastard. I’m really just surprised he didn’t wipe the memories straight from my mind.”

 

Of all the things Hank has said, has accused Charles of, this is the first that truly gives Erik pause. “ _Wiped_ the memories from your mind?” He repeats blankly, and Hank smirks.

 

“Of course. That’s what he does, didn’t you hear me? He manipulates and—”

 

“Manipulation and _stealing memories_ are two very different things.”

 

Now the other man is staring at him blankly. “He’s a _telepath_.”

 

“Yes, he can read minds and speak in them and…create illusions?” Erik shakes his head.

 

“He’s been ‘tweaking’ yours, clearly,” Hank mutters. “Charles is powerful, Raven used to tell me, the most powerful telepath in the world. He can alter your memories, erase them, add in new ones. He’s a mental terror. A child in an adult’s body with an adult’s power, really.” He snarls and Erik stifles the urge to eviscerate Charles’ not-brother, despite the growing confusion and clench of something he can’t place in his gut. The thought of Charles pulling at his mind like a puppet master makes  him feel a little sick, but he has to believe the best of Charles, that this man is just angry.

 

“So you’re just Kurt’s father.”

 

Hank freezes. “Not biologically, but in every other sense of the word—”

 

“Who _is_?”

 

A scowl. “I hardly—”

 

“You came here to lay waste to the image of my beloved, I think I’m allowed to ask after the paternity of your ‘son’.”

 

“Another mutant, a teleporter named Azazel. Raven and I broke up for a while, when we got back together, she was five months pregnant with Kurt.”

 

“Ah.” Erik rubs at the bridge of his nose. “What’s the point of you telling me all of this? What could you possibly gain from all of this?”

 

“I could say to help you, because I know Charles is a monster. But really…” he laughs, again with bitterness staining his voice. “Charles Xavier stole the love of my life from me, it’s only right that I return the favor.”

 

 **XXXIII.**

 

Charles is making pasta and doing the Twist in the kitchen. His eyes are bright with that gleam of childlike beauty that gives Erik pause, and he wonders how Charles is real. He doesn’t look like a kinslayer as he stirs the sauce bubbling in the pot, lower body moving seemingly autonomously from the upper.

 

He giggles, catching Erik’s attention.

 

“A kinslayer, now, am I?” The tone of his voice is no less airy and light than when he’d asked just fifteen minutes earlier if Erik minded a pinch of basil in the sauce.

 

“According to Hank, you are.”

 

Charles “hmm”s thoughtfully and nods.

 

“Why did you lie to me?”

 

“So you wouldn’t ask questions, like Hank said.”

 

“But—”

 

“It’s an open wound. She’s barely cold.” Charles is stirring a little more violently, now. “Going on two years.”

 

“But you killed her.” Erik says slowly.

 

“Hank blames me for her death.”

 

“So you… _didn’t_ kill her.”

 

The smile on those scarlet lips is broken, marred by a sorrow Erik doesn’t know how to react to. “She was my sister. Of course not.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am beyond sorry for the long wait. There's no way I can possibly apologize enough. I've had school, family and just...so many things pulling me away from being able to post or write. Furthermore, I've been struggling with finding a concrete direction for this story, considering it really started as a simple idea that spawned so much, so I don't feel this chapter is necessarily up to snuff, but by the next update (the wait won't be nearly as long this time, I promise) I'll be back up to the quality I expect of myself. 
> 
> Anyway, this chapter is dedicated to my phenomenal husband. Darling, you've been here supporting me all through this, giving me feedback, making me write when I was dflgkjhgdfg and keeping my spirits up. Your endless support and love is a light in the darkness, and the nameless, faceless ones have smiled upon me. All of my love, jalan atthirari anni.

**XXXIV.**

 

_“Charles?” Raven is most beautiful when she’s blue. Her soft, cerulean skin, crimson hair a bit longer than she prefers it brushing the edges of her gold-tipped eyelashes. Her elegant hands are soft against the sticky skin of his cheeks, voice a balm against his agitated mind. “Charles, come back. Come back to me.”_

_“Don’t touch me,” he sniffs, trembling and curling away, eyes wild and desperate, reddened and frightened or something beyond tangibility. “J-Just leave me alone.”_

_“Charles, sweet brother, shh. Calm down, come back. They can’t hurt you now, no one can.” Her mind is bright and beautiful, a grand palace with open courtyards and corridors, greenhouses and ballrooms in intricate, dazzling designs. And she’s his sister, he knows this serene mind, connected to his own, a refuge when he desperately needs it._

_This is Raven, Raven who he loves and cherishes like a sibling, like a child._

_But she’s **touching** him._

_Her bare skin is on his, touching a scar time hasn’t stolen the anger or pain from._

_“Raven, Raven, Raven, you can’t.” He’s pleading now, recoiling, withdrawing into himself and the dark nucleus of his mind, holding his bloody arms into the safety of his shell. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, **pleasestoptouchingme**.” _

_But her hands are still there._

_Her hands are trying to pry him open._

_“You’re losing too much blood. You have to stop. Let me help you, Charles. Charles, I love you. I want to help you.”_

_“Nonono,” he clings to his undoing, the knife whose every slice has only farther blackened his soul. And she’s trying to take it away, like she tries to take away the bottles he can never quite lose himself in._

_All while **touching** him._

_Caressing his liar’s skin, his ravaged, sin-slicked flesh._

_When he lashes out, he only registers it after the fact, when she screams._

_Against her skin, the blood almost looks violet, running down her arm, gash nearly identical to the one still gushing freely from his own limb. The roaring in his ears blocks out any pleas or screams as the tip dances with scaled flesh and the crimson beneath it._

_Her mind quavers, trembles and fractures. The disarray is pleasant, drowning any pain or fears._

_Until it goes silent._

_There are no ruins like those of Kurt Marko’s pathetic fortress, nor chaotic, dramatic outbreaks like this own. There’s only silence and murky darkness. Heavy and untouchable. He can’t break or feel it. Can’t repair it and apologize._

_Because there’s nothing left to fix._

_Raven is gone._

 

 

**XXXV.**

 

Kurt's eyes light up. His round, azure cheeks stretch into one of his sharp-toothed smiles, hands coming together in resounding claps.

 

"Chale!"

 

Hank freezes, hunched over a blood sample, hand stilling from scribbling illegible notes across a yellow pad. The knock comes moments after Kurt's exclamation, and had he not been sure the telepath was well aware they were home, he would ignore it. As it is, however, he straightens, brushes himself off, and answers the door.

 

Charles' expression is schooled into calm pleasantness, exuding his usual bubbly, gung-ho aura, eyes glittering like sapphires. He dons his work clothes: a thick, gray cardigan over a crisp, white dress shirt--unbuttoned at the collar to show off that pale stretch of neck--and dark gray slacks. Nothing about his demeanor is off-putting or unusual.

 

Which is the most unsettling part.

 

“I brought lunch.” A slow smile curls those scarlet lips and he holds up a large, brown paper bag. “Put Kurt down for a nap while I set up?” It isn’t a question. Without being invited in, Charles slips past and strolls toward the sofa, settling into the cushions and crossing his ankles, the bag in his lap.

 

Arguing, he can already tell, will be pointless. Hank obeys without question, ignoring Kurt’s spirited protests and repeated teleportation to his despondent uncle. Once Charles smilingly instructs him to nap, then come play, the boy is willingly deposited in his crib, sucking on the end of his tail in place of the pacifier he’d lost a month ago.

 

“You and I really need to have a chat,” the telepath announces brightly when Hank returns, demeanor slightly more menacing, gaze a little sharper.

 

“What do you want to ‘chat’ about, Charles?”

 

“Raven, of course.” His tone is so casual, Hank flinches.

 

“What about—?”

 

“Shut your traitorous mouth.” The delivery is patient, gentle, as the other man continues pulling cardboard containers out of his bag. “We had a . . . pact, dear, old friend. And your broke your end when you told Erik about Raven.”

 

“I didn’t give him—!”

 

“Did I say you could speak?” Charles laughs boisterously, leaning forward, eyes swirling with the rage of a caged beast. “ _Details_ are of little consequence, my friend. You were told _never. To speak. Of her._ Not Raven, not her death, _nothing_.” He had begun to lean forward as he spoke, voice dropping, but he now sat back, composing himself again. “And in return, your mind would remain your own with no tweaking or listening.” _But it would appear that contract is now null and void._

 

A spike of panic flashes across Hank’s mind. Charles laughs.

 

“I’m not going to _kill_ you, dear, silly Hank. Kurt needs you, and my lifestyle isn’t quite conducive to child rearing at the moment. And Azazel is still—”

 

“ _Not_ his father.” Hank snarls, making the telepath giggle.

 

“Emma has her hands rather full as it is with Sebastian, and as one can imagine, neither he nor Janos are even candidates for raising my little Kurtie-pie. So, as it is, you’re the best we have. Unless, of course, Logan would be willing to take him.”

 

“You’re a bastard.”

 

“Oh, how nice of you to notice.” Charles leans back again, raising his hand to drum the pads of his fingers teasingly against his temple. “Oh, Hank, your morals are _touching_ ; as is your anger, but you have no idea what you stepped into. What happened to Raven runs in veins you know nothing of.”

 

“What is there to ‘know’? You killed her! Plain and simple.”

 

“No. I’m afraid there is nothing ‘plain and simple’ about what happened. As with the relationship we shared, there are intricacies you fail to grasp, despite all of your genius.” He scowls. “No, it’s none of your business. And before you do any more damage _I_ have to clean up, I’ll have to step in.” Two fingers rest decisively on his temple. “The more you fight me, the more it will hurt.”

 

____________________

 

Hank wakes to the sounds of rustling and Charles’ humming. He yawns, opening his eyes slowly and looking around through askew spectacles.

 

Stacks of paper cover every available surface save the space the telepath allotted himself on the sofa, going over a page of notes and smiling to himself.

 

“Good evening, Briar Rose.” Charles looks up, grinning. “You fell asleep while we were going through our plans for Cerebro. I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

 

“Thanks.” He groans and stretches, looking out the open window to the setting sun, then back to Charles. The geneticist looks exhausted, sagging into the couch, worn. His eyes flutter occasionally and his hair is disheveled, a few more buttons of his shirt undone. “Were you drinking?”

 

“I . . .” Charles laughs. “A bit. Don’t look at me like that, Kurt’s still sleeping and I’m still quite sober thank you _ever so_.”

 

“Raven said—”

 

“To moderate myself. And as you can see . . .” He stands easily and turns around twice. “I have moderated my consumption rather successfully, thank _you_.”

 

The look Hank gives him is skeptical, but he doesn’t question further, knowing Charles can instinctively feel the disapproval coloring his mind.

 

“Now.” The Englishman dusts off his pants and does up those few buttons. “I didn’t want to leave while you were asleep, but Erik is expecting me home for dinner.”

 

“You’re _still_ with him? Charles—”

 

“I know, Hank. ‘Male coupling does nothing for the propagation of the race, either mutant or human. That being said, male-male love is—furthermore—unnatural and, frankly, wrong.’ I know. And I’m sure we’ll go through this song and dance a thousand more times. Be well, my friend.” With that, Charles slips out, only staggering slightly.

 

**XXXVI.**

Clubs have always been better hunting grounds for Charles. His easy smile is enticing, the cadence of his voice appealing, no one questions a man like that, a wisp of existence. It isn't Erik's scene, but the telepath's selections, the rush of seeing him carve and reform (plus the eager, blood-soaked sex afterwards) is enough to convince him.

 

So, there he is, leaning on a polished bar downing yet another glass of cheap scotch while Charles chats up a burly man with a handlebar moustache and rippling biceps that could snap his pretty little neck with a single flex. _Your concern is sweet_ , the telepath just barely brushes his mind and Erik smirks into the glass, which is mostly ice now.

 

"A man like you shouldn't drink alone." The voice is distinctly feminine and drenched in sex dripping off her every word like molasses. She settles down on a stool beside him, leaning in a way that makes her ample cleavage even more apparent. One of those "liberated" women, apparently. She's lovely, of course, tan-skinned and dark-haired, her smile wide and stained with an artificial cherry, unlike Charles' naturally scarlet grins.

 

"And I suppose you'll drink with me?" He asks, voice a lazy drawl from drink, able to conjure a slow smile. She nods and holds out a hand.

 

"Louisa." She turns to the bartender. "I'll have what he's having."

 

The young man behind the bar--a fiery-haired Cajun Charles insists is a "brilliant specimen" of a mutant--refills Erik's glass and gets a new one for Louisa.

 

As it turns out, for a human woman, Louisa is an engaging, intelligent creature with a whip of a sense of humor and crackling wit. She matches him drink for drink, slowly becoming less inhibited in her casual touches, brushing her fingers across his thighs or sweeping a mussed lock of hair back. It's almost flattering, and fun in a way he imagines having a friend is.

 

Then, he feels it.

 

The weight of Charles' gaze is like a ton of bricks crushing his shoulders down and he leans into the bar for...something. Respite, maybe. Louisa shifts in her seat and turns around, eyes sweeping the bar, somehow managing to miss the scowling telepath.

 

"D'you get the feeling we're being watched?" She asks, leaning in conspiratorially.

 

"Just a bit."

 

"Maybe we should, y'know, get out of here." Of course, she's beautiful, and most men would jump at the chance laid out before him. Hell, usually, he would have fallen into bed with this woman, maybe seen her a few times before moving on to someone with superior DNA. 

 

But not tonight.

 

Not tonight or any other night. It's sad, because she has no idea who she's up against. How she truly stands no chance against the irritable telepath at the end of the bar, who's demanding his attention.

 

 _Say yes. I'll meet you in the alley in five_.

 

Erik flicks a look at Charles, who's lazily swirling something brightly colored in a martini glass, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, twisting around his cocked head like a shadowy halo. The man from before has his head buried in Charles' neck, and jealousy shoots through Erik like a bolt. Charles smirks and waves them off, reaching one hand up to pull the man's head back, angle it differently.

 

Erik forces a smile and takes her hand. "Let's."

 

She hangs off his arm as they push against the crowds and out a side door into the alley. Every inch of her is eager, her lips pressing sloppy kisses against his jaw, smearing lipstick from there to his mouth. Erik kisses back, but the dance is unfamiliar. He hasn't mapped this mouth a thousand times, doesn't know if prodding the right place will produce a breathy little moan.

 

Her tongue is heavy and intrusive, and Erik hates the taste of her saliva mingling with his. As much as he's come to appreciate this woman, he has no desire to kiss her, or to have her hands sliding up his shirt, tugging the fastenings of his trousers.

 

"Oh, well this is awkward!" Charles' voice is a sloppy slur, but when Erik looks over--feigning surprise--his eyes are clear and cold. "So sorry!" His cardigan holds on at the ends of his narrow wrists by a wish and a prayer, shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, bite marks and bruises standing out on pale skin. And he's twirling a knife between anxious fingers.

 

Erik forgets the woman is even there.

 

"Erik," Louisa is starting to move behind him. "He has a knife."

 

"Oh, this?" The telepath holds the blade up as if surprised to find it in his hand. "Want it?" He holds it out with two fingers, swinging it by the tip until blood begins trickling down it.

 

"N-No, thank you. We were just leaving and--"

 

"So soon?" Charles looks upset by the prospect. "But we've barely started, and I had such _/plans/_ for you Louisa!"

 

Terror fills her eyes. "Erik, we need to go."

 

"No, Erik. Stay." Erik loves the way Charles' vice has dropped, rough and throaty. He sounds like he's just been fucked.

 

"Erik." She's tugging at his arm, now, tears rolling down her cheeks. But she doesn’t run, she can’t. Charles crosses the space between them slowly wraps his fingers around her chin and squeezes.

 

“You picked the wrong man, sweetheart.” Charles shakes his head and looks at Erik, leaning up as if to kiss him, but is, instead, rewarded with a slap with the flat of the knife, which Charles points angrily at him. “You are _mine_ , Erik Lehnsherr.”

 

“Charles, I—”

 

“Shut up and watch the door.”

 

“But—”

 

“No, you haven’t earned it.”

 

The dominant urges in Erik are dulled, knowing Charles is right. Charles is always right.

 

The telepath presses Louisa to the ground, lapping his and Erik’s blood from the blade and wiping it on his trousers. She screams as the tip presses into the hollow of her throat, puncture soft skin. Blood chokes any other possible sounds save a wet death rattle.

 

Charles, of course, is humming Elvis Presley or some such, utterly unconcerned as he carves out Cassiopeia across the woman’s torso. The silver tip of the knife dances through flesh stained a vibrant crimson, welling up on either side of the incisions like a flooded riverbank.

 

" _Wise men say_

_Only fools rush in_

_But I can't help_

_Falling in love with you..._ " the telepath's voice is soft and clear, sweet as spring rain, so utterly calm. It mingles with the scraping of metal on bone, and Erik can feel the knife biting into her sternum, twisting it to leave a divot that would serve as the crux of his 'X.'

 

Erik watches, utterly enraptured, wanting nothing more than to press Charles up against the wall and make him cry, wanting to take him so viciously it left a haze that warned everyone away, this belongs to Erik Lehnsherr. The telepath glances up, a warm streak of blood across his cheek, dripping down his pale cheeks.

 

Louisa's body has stopped trembling, stopped trying to fight him off. She's just . . . still, eyes staring without sight at the stars. Her cheeks are cut up into a permanent smile, whorls decorating her paling face, nose broken in on itself, jaw hanging slack and broken. It isn't Charles' typical style, to mangle and mutilate so angrily, but the artfulness is still very much present.

 

Finally, _finally_ , the Englishman deigns to lock their gazes, and the darkness in those blue eyes is hungry, angry, possessive, wanting, so much want.

 

They meet halfway, limbs tangling, bodies coming home. Erik presses that smaller body into the wall, twining their fingers and spreading their arms wide, manipulating Charles into a spread eagle. But, before he can make a move, the telepath has flipped their positions, one hand pressed into Erik's chest, the other undoing his shirt with a clinical efficiency.

 

"You're _mine_." He states viciously, tearing open the last few buttons, eyes narrowing. "Understand? Mine."

 

All Erik can choke out around his surprise and lust is a quiet, "yes." The knife kisses Erik's flesh, breaching it before he can protest.

 

"Shh," Charles croons, dragging it into a slash above Erik's heart before pulling away and creating another, a bright red 'X.'

 

"I love you," Erik growls, nipping the other's lower lip and ripping his shirt open far less gracefully, tugging the knife away and pressing Charles against the icy bricks. ****

**XXXVII.**

The 'L' over Charles' heart only bleeds when he picks at the scab over it or when he stretches just so. It swoops just beneath one nipple and stretches up near the shadows of his collarbone, red and angry. Erik traces his finger around and over it, watching him hiss and squirm, biting his already bruised, swollen lip and whimpering.

 

"You're so beautiful," he murmurs, eyes bright in the dimness of their bathroom.

 

"Oh, shush." Charles pinches the angry, open skin of the 'X' on Erik's chest, kissing away the blood that wells up.

 

"I love you."

 

For a moment, Charles is silent, contemplating, before slowly looking up through his lashes. "As I love you."

 

 

**XXXVIII.**

 

“My boy, it’s been too long!” Charles smiles like the delicate flower he was so many years ago when Sebastian first plucked him. The telepath comes easily into his arms, accepting the tight embrace with a childlike glee. His dark hair has grown a bit too long, just barely glancing the curve of his narrow shoulders, but criticism is never a good way to start conversation off with the emotionally volatile young man.

 

“You’ve been a stranger,” Sebastian chides, pinching Charles’ pale cheek and chuckling. “Slave to the students? Or just with eradicating the filth from this city?”

 

A pretty flush steals over Charles’ cheeks and he looks up through his fan of eyelashes, smiling like a child who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Things here and there. But, yes, _that_ does take up a considerable amount of time.”

 

Sebastian chuckles and ruffles chestnut waves in a fatherly show of affection. Charles had been a gift from the biological gods, so very broken, consumed by his own amazing gift, a mental terror whose fits of rage and sorrow made the earth tremble. Unlike Erik, who had required careful breaking—later leading to resentment and a lust for revenge—Charles had needed to be built up, coddled and loved. It, of course, helped that his mind was a little twisted up by some miracle of fate, his morals a shade on the questionable side.

 

He was everything Sebastian Shaw—as he had begun to call himself then—needed. Everything he continues to need.

 

The boy is headstrong, but malleable, unsure of every action, prone to second-guessing himself. Yes, he’s perfect. Perfect and prattling cheerily about his recent crop of students, their minds, while Emma—the gem that she is—listens intently, laughing and inputting her own opinion from time to time.

 

“And of course there’s Erik,” she’s saying, and Sebastian pauses. It isn’t the first time Emma has tossed the name at him, but it’s the first time he’s paid it any sort of real attention.

 

“Erik?” He butts in, and they both look. “Erik . . . Lehnsherr?” He dares to hope.

 

“ _Emma!_ ” Charles hisses, “you didn’t tell him?”

 

“I tried,” she mutters, folding her arms like an insolent child. “Not my fault he doesn’t listen.”

 

“Tell me _what_?” Sebastian snaps, and Emma replies before Charles can vocalize some artful excuse,

 

“Charles is fucking Erik Lehnsherr. Erik Lehnsherr is hell-bent on killing you, Charles thinks you need to be careful.”

 

Charles puffs his cheeks out and punches her arm, hissing when she turns diamond before his fist makes contact. Sebastian narrows his eyes and turns to look at his younger “son.”

 

“Is that true, Charles?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“I’ve been busy. And, like I said, Erik is trying to find and kill you, I can’t just make it obvious I know you. He wouldn’t understand. He loves me, but I don’t know if I could make him See . . .”

 

“You have to help him See, Charles. Don’t you understand? With Erik by our side, you fully signed on, nothing could possibly stop us.”

 

“Sebastian, it’s not that simple,” he sighs, looking so small and bedraggled at the mere mention of Erik. “What you did to him . . . that was unforgivable. You always said we don’t hurt our own, I’ve lived by those words so many years, but you . . . you defied your own words.”

 

“That was a very long time ago, Charles.” Sebastian glances to Emma, who only gives a slight shake of her head. “And that was what Erik needed to reach his full potential. Erik is stubborn. You bed him, you ought to know that.”

 

“That was what Kurt Marko believed.” Charles growls, his anger stifling.

 

“Kurt Marko wanted to sell you, a good little boy, away. Kurt Marko let you be—”

 

“ _I know what Kurt Marko did_.”

 

“—every day, Charles. I love Erik like a son, just like you. I did what I did to make him powerful for _us_ , for _mutant kind_ and its betterment. Erik is a better man for it.”

 

“Am _I_ a better man?” Charles’ voice is soft, dangerous.

 

“For better or worse, you are a strong man. You never would have come to me if not for what happened then. And though I wish I could change that, you are who you are for it.” Sebastian strokes one anger-flushed cheek. “I did what was necessary for both of you. Treated you as you needed to be treated for you to be the strong men you are today.”

 

Charles stares at him a long time, expression indecipherable, carefully and intentionally blank. Something dark and angry flits through his eyes, quickly buried beneath the blue.

 

“Stay away from Erik. I’m not taking sides in this. And I’m not ready to lose him.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, SO sorry for the long wait (hopefully the length of this update kinda makes up for it, y/n?). The last months of school have been killing me over and over, but now that summer's finally arrived I'm hoping to be updating both this and my other fics more often. A thousand and one thanks for my beautiful husband for her encouragement and support when I'd all but given up, and--as always--my lovely guru for believing in me <3
> 
> And, of course, to all of you who have stuck with me through my crazy ass updating schedule. We're getting closer and closer to the end. 
> 
> **TW in this chapter for:** implied rape/non-con; child abuse

**XXXIX.**

 

His lips are sweet as sin and laced with a dispassionate rejoinder to a thousand unasked questions. His hair is threaded with sweat that makes the locks darker and curlier and stick to his pale neck.

 

Sweat drips, slow as creeping death, down pale skin, pools in the hollow of his throat and is still before another bead flows down his chest, down the dips of his ribs to his concave stomach, disappearing after the waistband of his obscenely short shorts. His eyes are half-open, twitching down occasionally in a thoughtless blink, pupils constricted in a sea of blue.

 

Every few seconds, he flits farther away, smiling pleasantly around the popsicle melting between his lips. Charles is playing his games again.

 

Erik, fool that he is, gives chase, fingers outstretched for that slender waist, aching to drive into that tantalizing body and claim it with teeth and nails, to play with him. And Charles knows it, but his only words are empty questions about his lecture the following day. He hops up on the counter, crossing his shapely legs at the ankles, leaning his head back against the cabinet and stares thoughtfully at the ceiling.

 

The popsicle's melty castoff drips down his fingers, staining them a cherry red like a child's mockery of the blood that so often traced those same ridges and valleys.

 

"Yes, love?" Charles' tongue darts out to lick along the side of one curled finger, smacking his sticky lips together and fluttering his lashes.

 

Erik more or less lunges forward, shoving the telepath up against the cabinet in full, then drags him forward so that Charles' crotch is pressed into Erik's chest, legs around his torso. "You, Charles Xavier, are the biggest cocktease I've ever had the displeasure of fucking on a regular."

 

"You love me."

 

"That was never debatable."

 

The telepath tastes of cherry and childish innocence all twisted up in the riddle that comprises Charles' existence. His lips are cold and sticky, tongue stained red, and his fingers make sucking sounds as he lays them on Erik's skin, then pulls them back and digs them in elsewhere.

 

He pulls back first and shakes his increasingly shaggy hair out imperiously, regarding Erik down the bridge of his bumpy little nose. His fingers brush Erik's temple down to his cheek, tracing the curve of his jaw and there's a softness of adoration in his eyes. After a moment, he leans in, lips to Erik's forehead.

 

"I like for you to be still," he whispers, and that soft mouth brushes the lines of Erik's brow.

"It is as though you are absent

And you hear me from far away

And my voice does not touch you

It seems as though your eyes had flown away

And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth

As all things are filled with my soul

You emerge from the things

Filled with my soul

You are like my soul

A butterfly of dream

And you are like the word: Melancholy"

 

His breathing stutters to a halt, and Erik picks up in his silence, tilting his head up to look the telepath in the eyes.

 

"I like for you to be still

And you seem far away

It sounds as though you are lamenting

A butterfly cooing like a dove

And you hear me from far away

And my voice does not reach you

Let me come to be still in your silence

And let me talk to you with your silence

That is bright as a lamp

Simple, as a ring

You are like the night

With its stillness and constellations

Your silence is that of a star

As remote and candid

 

"I like for you to be still

It is as though you are absent

Distant and full of sorrow

So you would've died

One word then, One smile is enough

And I'm happy;

Happy that it's not true."

 

His thumb sweeps a tear from those bright blue eyes, kisses his agony away.

 

Charles' breathing shudders and he hastily moves to wipe his eyes, but Erik grabs the hand, uncurls the trembling fist and kisses each, individual finger.

 

"It's okay to cry, _liebling_ ," he whispers into the telepath's palm, looks up into shocked eyes, and back down. "Just cry."

 

“’m sorry,” Charles sniffles, rubbing at his eyes roughly. “Being stupid.”

 

“Having feelings isn’t stupid, Charles.” Erik assures the telepath, peppering kisses across his flushed face. “You aren’t an automaton that cannot feel, and lets nothing phase him, as much as you’d let others believe. And I don’t love you any less for it.”

 

Surprise dances through those bloodshot, blue eyes.

 

“I know you, Charles.” He touches the raised outline of the ‘L’ above Charles’ heart, stretching his fingers out to cover it. “I know what you are, and you’re perfect as you are.” He chuckles and nuzzles the other man’s cheek. “Even God cries, why can’t you?”

 

“God is, in theory, a perfect being. God would feel and experience emotions on the scale of a perfect being. Perhaps, let us postulate—”

 

“Stop trying to rationalize deities and your tear ducts,” Erik laughs, kissing Charles’ slowly smiling lips and pulls him off the counter, unobvious in his enjoyment of the way those shapely legs locked around his waist. “Let me take you to bed.”

 

“Was arguing ever an option?”

 

They fall together in the effortless way they do, with only a kiss more intention than usual. Erik worships every square inch of soft flesh, kissing at Charles, up his soft belly, until the telepath smiles through his moans.

 

In return, Charles whispers poetry into the secret crevices of Erik’s body, traces literature and monologues and arias into the flat muscles of his abdomen.

 

_Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,_

_From passionate pain to deadlier delight,—_

_I am too young to live without desire,_

_Too young art thou to waste this summer night_

_Asking those idle questions which of old_

_Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told._

 

Charles laughs when Erik tosses him onto his back and regards him like a starving man, their chests heaving in perfect synch. A deep red flush reaches from sweat-dusted cheeks down to the tempting, guiding ‘V’ of hipbones. Erik latches onto a pert, straining nipple, rolls the nub beneath his tongue, familiar to this bit of flesh, and Charles is whispering, ever reciting in his lilting voice, sweet as honeysuckle.

 

_For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,_

_And wisdom is a childless heritage,_

_One pulse of passion—youth’s first fiery glow,—_

_Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:_

_Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,_

_Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see!_

_Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale_

_Like water bubbling from a silver jar,_

_So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,_

_That high in heaven she is hung so far_

_She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,—_

_Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and labouring moon._

 

Erik twirls his fingers through the tin of slick he desperately needs to purchase more of, teases Charles’ entrance until the telepath begins shifting in that needy little way he does under the metal-bender. His legs—high in the air at a perfect ninety-degree angle to his torso, crossed at the ankles—obscure that heaving body, the flush he’d chased down to the leaking tip of Charles’ cock. He presses one finger past that tight ring of muscles down to the knuckle, twists and wiggles it, and Charles cries out finally when the pad just barely glances his prostate.

 

_White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,_

_The fallen snow of petals where the breeze_

_Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam_

_Of boyish limbs in water,—are not these_

_Enough for thee, dost thou desire more?_

_Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store._

_For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown_

_Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour_

_For wasted days of youth to make atone_

_By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,_

_Hearken they now to either good or ill,_

_But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will._

 

They aren’t normally so gentle, it’s something Erik has almost forgotten how to be. Previous lovers begged him to be gentle when his fingers bruised their skin, but Charles never does. Charles smiles like he _knows_ , and his lips are forgiveness, his soft skin salvation. Most days, he’s a map of Erik, purple and yellowing bruises and that ‘L’ over his heart.

 

But Erik wants to be gentle, Erik _is_ gentle. He curls his fingers inside Charles, stretches him with such care he almost doesn’t know himself. His lips kiss the trembling backs of Charles’ knees, sweep patterns across those creamy thighs. And Charles whispers into the air and his pretty blue eyes are closed.

 

_They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,_

_Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine,_

_They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees_

_Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,_

_Mourning the old glad days before they knew_

_What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do._

_And far beneath the brazen floor they see_

_Like swarming flies the crowd of little men,_

_The bustle of small lives, then wearily_

_Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again_

_Kissing each other’s mouths, and mix more deep_

_The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep._

Erik spreads Charles’ legs and kisses verse from his lips— _There all day long the golden-vestured sun, Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch a-blaze_ —before lifting those quivering legs up and over his shoulders. His shoulders are covered by Charles, whose eyes open slowly, blink, and Erik’s gut twists, because no one has ever looked at him like that. Worship lives in that gaze, worship and the sort of love that drives men mad, the sort that drives men to murder and mutilate.

 

Charles smiles, breathes an “I love you” amidst his poesy and his body opens for Erik like morning glory.

 

_And when the gaudy web of noon is spun_

_By its twelve maidens through the crimson haze_

_Fresh from Endymion’s arms comes forth the moon,_

_And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon._

_There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead_

_Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust_

_Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede_

_Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must,_

_His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare_

_The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air._

 

Charles moans like he has something to prove. His head is tilted back, hair strewn every which way on the pillow, the pale column of his throat exposed. But Erik doesn’t nibble it, doesn’t sink his teeth further into that sweet flesh until it ruptures like a peach, blood welling from the teeth marks and trailing down his honeyed flesh and pooling in the pillow.

 

Erik pulls his hips back and pushes them forward, slow and somewhere between too-rough and too-gentle. His fingers rub gently along Charles’ reddened nipples, teasing them until the telepath cries obscenities. And Erik whispers “I love you” into a trembling calf.

 

_There in the green heart of some garden close_

_Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side,_

_Her warm soft body like the briar rose_

_Which would be white yet blushes at its pride,_

_Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis_

_Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss._

 

Charles presses back to meet Erik’s hips as they rock up, his pretty face all aflame with passion. His fingers twist and writhe in the sheets, the fabric tearing and making nest around those needy digits. He cries out in ecstasy, repeats Erik’s name until his voice is hoarse. And Erik holds him there, taking him like It was their first time.

 

He quakes with desire and groans when those questing fingers scrape their nails into his back until blood rushes, warm and thick, down his torso. 

 

_There never does that dreary north-wind blow_

_Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,_

_Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,_

_Nor doth the red-toothed lightning ever dare_

_To wake them in the silver-fretted night_

_When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight._

_Alas! they know the far Lethæan spring,_

_The violet-hidden waters well they know,_

_Where one whose feet with tired wandering_

_Are faint and broken may take heart and go,_

_And from those dark depths cool and crystalline_

_Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne._

 

When Charles comes, his entire body seizes up and freezes save a slight tremor, like a tiny earthquake beneath his flesh. He digs his heels into Erik’s back and tightens like a vice, his ragged voice raising up and dying out in a soundless wail. His semen stripes his belly and splashes across Erik’s chest, but there’s a streak that decorates Charles’ chin, drips down his neck.

 

That image coupled with the newfound pressure on his cock sends Erik along after his lover, thrusting his orgasm into Charles, who squirms and moans, his limping dick twitching.

 

“ _Erik_ ,” he whispers, and the man collapses above him, slipping out of Charles’ sweet body almost unwillingly. He sags against Charles, buries his face in the telepath’s neck, breathes in his natural Charles scent mixed with the tang of sweat and sex.

 

Gentle fingers card through the thick, sweat-heavy locks of Erik’s hair, and his body is warm and inviting, like an alabaster cradle splashed with blue and scarlet. If he’s too heavy, the telepath never complains, he simply makes himself comfortable in the indent of the mattress and curls his limbs around Erik like an octopus. He lets himself drift off that way, listening to the strong beat of Charles’ heart, and his lilting whispers into the night.

 

_But we oppress our natures, God or Fate_

_Is our enemy, we starve and feed_

_On vain repentance—O we are born too late!_

_What balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed_

_Who crowd into one finite pulse of time_

_The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime._  

 

**XL.**

 

_‘Hydrogen, Lithium, Sodium . . .’ His thighs are bruised and slick with blood and shame._

_‘Beryllium, Magnesium, Calcium . . .’ The weight on his chest is stifling, but he doesn’t cry out, doesn’t give him the satisfaction, even as his body screams and twists like a wild animal._

_‘Scandium, Yttrium . . .’ The voice in his ear is poison, a taint that stains his mind, blooming in its crux like noxious morning glory. It’s torture, torture who sings that this will never be okay again, **you** will never be okay again. Nevernevernevermore. _

_‘Titanium, Zirconium, Hafnium . . .’ His head is a lead weight stuffed full of cotton and steamrolled over. The silence is deafening, and his mind bounces its barbs around, cuts itself instead of the intended. The wounds fester, throb. He bandages them, but they do not heal._

_‘Vanadium, Niobium, Tantalum . . .’ His eyes refuse to produce any semblance of tears. They stare, cold and blank, ahead, taking notice of the blood surrounding his trembling hips like a halo._

_He doesn’t try to walk._

_‘Chromium, Molybdenum, Tungsten . . .’ He tries to walk. He falls, hands assert themselves over yellowing fingerprints, pull him up like a lame duckling, deposit him on the cot. The voice whispers, “same time, same place tomorrow, ey Charlie?” It touches his hair and calls him a good boy._

_‘Manganese, Technetium, Rhenium . . .’ He gauges response time to the amount of time it would take to bleed out._

_The odds aren’t in his favor._

_Blood squirts him in the eye._

_‘Iron, Ruthenium, Osmium . . .’ The odds are never in his favor._

_‘Cobalt, Rhodium, Iridium . . .’ The cuffs chafe, the one around his neck makes breathing shallow and gasping. Gabriel cracks his rib and calls him an idiot._

_Charles opens his mouth._

Charles is screaming, twisting and writhing in the sheets like the mattress is trying to kill him. His flailing limbs strike Erik repeatedly in the chest, and the metal-bender is instantly awake, trying to secure Charles before he does further damage to himself or his bedfellow.

 

“Charles, Charles wake up,” he shakes the telepath, who is murmuring “nonononostopstopnostop” so fast Erik can barely get a sense of the words.

 

Erik uses his superior body mass to his advantage and flips Charles onto his back, sits atop him, and pins his thrashing arms to the bed, shaking the Englishman again.

 

“Charles, you’re dreaming. Charles, wake up!” He transfers both of Charles’ wrists to one hand and uses his free one to smack him. Charles’ eyes fly open, pupils dilated, brow shining with swear, a certain unprecedented wildness to him.

 

“Get off me!” Charles demands, pushing at Erik, floundering beneath him. The moment the taller man is off him, Charles sits up, breathing heavily, fingers grasping the sheets like a tether keeping him from floating somewhere far away.

 

“Charles,” Erik murmurs, approaching him with caution, reaching out slowly. “Charles, it’s me. It’s Erik. Calm down, liebling, it was just a dream, you’re fine.”

 

The telepath fixes him with a sad, owlish look, before accepting Erik’s embrace. His trembling body sags against Erik, fingers dig into his sides as both arms curl around the man’s middle.

 

“Hey,” Erik combs down Charles’ hair and shushed him gently. “Hey, you’re okay, everything is okay. I’m here, I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

 

“Erik,” Charles croaks, his voice wrecked and breathy. “It wasn’t just a dream, it wasn’t just a nightmare . . .”

 

Something in Erik twists like a knife, boils his blood. “It’s gone and past, you’re past it, Charles. And you’re okay now, alright? No one will ever hurt you again.”

 

Charles is quiet, slowly stilling, relaxing into his lover. They’re silent, serene, together, taking a soundless refuge in the simple presence of the other, the steady heartbeat. Erik breaks the silence.

 

“Let’s go out, hm? I know a coffee shop that stays open all night.”

 

“Okay.”

 

**XLI.**

Charles looks sweet and sensible bundled up in his winter coat, fingers snug in leather gloves, a knit cap atop his messy hair. His cheeks are rosy, eyes still a little wild, but considerably calmer than before. Erik wraps an arm around his waist, figures any passersby won’t see two men, probably won’t see anyone at all, too wrapped up in their own little worlds.

 

They walk for the fresh, crisp air and Charles babbles about nonsense—presumably to calm his nerves—which makes Erik smile because he loves the sound of Charles’ voice in the silence, like the world is holding its breath, waiting to hear what he has to say next. It’s senseless, sprinkled liberally with “Erik, I love you” and random statements that start with “did you know . . .” But Erik smiles and laughs gamely because seeing Charles fall apart scared him more than he can admit even to himself.

 

The café is warm and relatively empty. The bored woman at the cash register smiles flirtatiously at them both and makes Charles’ tea extra strong, Erik’s latte extra foamy, then lets them alone. They sit in a table in the corner and hold hands over the table, smiling at one another like they’re doing something particularly naughty. Charles is giggling as he recounts a tale of a boy who’d shown up to his lecture when he’d meant to go to an art history class and spent the entire class wondering about lecture etiquette, fearing Charles would bean him with an eraser or impale him with his pointer should he try to leave.

 

This tale, as with any of Charles’, wouldn’t be nearly as funny if it hadn’t been told by the Englishman, who gesticulates wildly as he speaks and does ridiculous accents for each character. Erik laughs and Charles uses the sugar and cream to illustrate a scaled down model of the lecture hall, setting the cream up on the napkin dispenser to represent the student and the sugar at the end of the table representative of him.

 

“After the class the poor sod came up and _apologized_ to me,” Charles laughs until his cheeks turn pink, then impersonates a gawping fish, doing a terribly overdone Californian accent. “’’scuse me Professor Xavier, I showed up totally, like, on accident to your lecture. And it was great, hella cool and all, but I was looking for art history, so, like, I’m sorry and . . . shit’ then the poor bloke runs out of the room like a chaste soul out of Hell!” Charles snorts into his tea and polishes it off, grinning.

 

“Poor thing, you’re ever so intimidating.” Erik chuckles and pushes his empty cup around the table by the metal gilding around the brim.

 

“Very, darling.” He smiles and rests his chin in one upturned palm. “Grab me another, will you? I’m gonna pop outside for a cig, alright?” Erik nods, not missing the way Charles’ fingers brush his shoulder as he passes, singing softly to himself. “ _Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful . . ._ ”

 

The café is quiet without Charles’ delighted—if a tad manic—chatter, and Erik contemplates his new latte while waiting. He can feel the metal of Charles’ zip somewhere on the side of the building and his sleeves moving about, pulling out his cigarette case. It pauses a moment before continuing, and Erik can sense the metal he wrapped around Charles’ filter touching the telepath’s lips twice before his voice intrudes on Erik’s thoughts.

 

 _Darling, there is the most delightfully human mugger out here asking for my wallet._ Charles’ voice is amused, but Erik is up immediately. _No need to worry, my love. But the Prince Charming act is darling_.

 

The alley is dimly lit by a single fixture above the back door of the café. Charles is leaned against the wall, and the mugger is standing frozen, gun leveled at the telepath, who cheerfully takes a long drag of his cigarette and exhales with a wide grin.

 

“Hello, darling.” He lets the man go, and he instantly begins to quake.

 

“W-What the fuck did you do, you fucking freak!?”

 

“Ah-ah, Mr. Jones, language.” Charles smirks and pushes off the wall to stand beside Erik. “I _could_ have you bite your tongue off and hold your breath, and then where would you be?” He arches a brow and the familiar Charles Erik knows is back with a vengeance, twirling a lock of hair between his fingers.

 

“What are you—what!? What the fuck are you?”

 

“Isn’t this the part where I say something horribly cheesy?” Charles asks with a smile. “Like . . . ‘I’m your worst nightmare’ or some such?”

 

“Gods be good, liebling, _please_.” Erik groans and Charles, god bless him, is laughing that full-bellied laugh that makes his face flush, watching the would-be mugger with mirthful eyes, fingers glued to his temple. Erik echoes the sentiments and steps forward, their amusement blending in the night sky.

 

When Charles lets the man go in earnest, it’s obvious by the way he moves, but it’s impossible to stop laughing at the expression of utter terror on the man’s face. Even the sharp bang of the man's gun is hilarious, the bullet rocketing toward Erik until it isn't.

 

The laughter dies.

 

Charles' scream chills Erik's blood for the second time that night, and he turns to watch in horror as his little love collapses into an icy puddle, his entire body convulsing, little whimpers escaping his chapped lips.

 

Erik isn’t sure what he’s doing, but the gun explodes, and the man’s shriek is much shorter, cut off by a gurgle. The metal-bender falls beside the telepath, whose expression is frozen in grim realization.

 

“Erik . . . oh, Erik . . .” he cries, and Erik is picking the weeping man up, carrying him while blood soaks the material of his jacket.

 

**XLII.**

 

_She doesn’t look at him, pretends he doesn’t exist. Her fingers tremble as she lights yet another cigarette, cherry lipstick staining the filter like the edge of her crystal glass. She’s well put together, of course, she always is when coming from a public appearance, the alcohol on her breath masked by nicotine and caffeine. But now it’s just the two of them in silence, son at the feet of his mother like a dog that bites trying to get back in its master’s good graces._

The lights are bright in his eyes, the voices throb in his mind. Erik’s voice is far away, like he’s speaking to him through an ocean, and the crashing of the waves is oh so pleasant . . .

 

_He’s three and Mother is sitting at the edge of the dock in her red bathing suit, cooing to him, but something is holding his foot, tugging it back. Empty gold eyes stare up from the crystal depths, and when he looks back up, Mother is withdrawing her favor, walking away in her wedding dress._

_Kurt Marko smiles and curls his tentacles around his mother,_ into _her, poisons her mind, pierces her skin with strings and makes her dance away._

“Charles, Charles please!” There’s a long, flat ringing and the waves flurry around his head, just below his earlobes. No, it’s all too loud.

 

He slides back, let’s his body crash against the rocks, an insistent pain knotted in his back like a blade he can’t reach to jerk out. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IAMSOSORRY  
> IAMSOSORRY  
> IAMSOSORRY *prostrates self*  
> There are no words to properly describe how sorry I am that this has taken an age to get written/posted. This chapter was an absolute bitch to get out, so I'm really sorry if it's somewhat "eh," I promise you guys the next one will be better. We're coming toward our ending within the next few chapters and I promise not to disappear like that again. I'm not making any promises, since I've gone and signed up for the big bang and that in concert with college apps is not a great mixture, but I will try to have something posted within the month? Before Halloween, I hope!  
> Thank you guys for commenting and being so kind, you keep me driven!

**XLIII.**

 

The doctors whisper “paralysis” like a foul word around children.

 

It sends Erik’s blood into a boil as they file in and out of the spacious room, look Charles over, and shake their heads. No, they can’t fix this, they’re very sorry. The surgery required to mend Charles’ spine will only keep the tear from severing it completely, but his legs will never feel again.

 

Charles will never pace before a class or stroll in on Erik’s shower swinging a tube of slick and grinning. Charles’s icy toes will never press up against Erik’s calves in the middle of the night, his giggles cutting through the darkness between them. He’ll never dance or swim or walk up to a man in an alley with intent to kill.

 

Charles will never be the man Erik came to love.

 

Charles will always be broken, a shadow of his former glory.

 

And that’s enough to bring a prickling of tears to Erik’s eyes. He rests his head on Charles’ bandaged arm and allows himself this moment.

 

____________________

 

Charles had awoken only once since his hospitalization. It was on the third day, his surgery over, doctors keeping him for observation. Erik has been dozing in the chair beside the bed when shaky fingers found their way into his hair, startling him awake.

 

Blue eyes stared placidly at him. He could feel Charles in his head for once, the handling of his telepathy almost clumsy, sluggish. It latched onto the word “paralysed” like a leech, and Charles’ brow was furrowing. The telepath went through Erik’s thoughts, his memories of conversations with the doctors, and something in his eyes quavered.

 

“Darling?” Charles’ voice trembled.

 

“Mm?”

 

“I love you.” His smile was off, but Erik didn’t question it.

 

“I love you too.”

 

“Would you fetch me a glass of water?”

 

“Mmhm.”

 

Charles squeezed his hand as he left.

 

When he returned, nurses were running into the room with IV bags and Charles’ bed was surrounded. He could hear Charles screaming, his voice broken in a way Erik had never heard.

 

“ _NO! NO! I can’t! You can’t make me live like this!_ ” His cries were punctuated with a sob and Erik’s gut twisted. He slipped into the room, hovering like a ghost as a few male nurses restrained the telepath while the doctor tried to sew up the gaping gashes in Charles’ arms. He could feel Charles’ telepathy crackling in the air like a brewing thunderstorm, ready to lash out. It stopped suddenly.

 

The nurse withdrew a needle from Charles’ arm and they finished sewing and bandaging him.

 

Since then, Charles has slept, his arms restrained. The straps on his ankles seem excessive, but the nurse insists they’re necessary.

 

His face is deceptively peaceful, almost convincing that he’ll wake up and smile in that way he does when he surprises Erik, that he’ll laugh and say his secondary mutation is self-healing, swing his pretty legs over the side of the hospital bed and skip through the building with his lover in thrall.

 

Erik has taught himself not to dream of such things, forces himself to hold to this.

 

He squeezes Charles’ limp hand and scratches days’ worth of stubble.

 

“You must be Erik.”

 

Erik’s head jerks up, not realizing he’d started to doze.

 

The woman standing at the door is giving him a cool, assessing look. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could mistake her for a nurse with her all-ivory ensemble. She gives him a thin smirk before clicking to Charles’ other side, touching his cheek and pressing her rouged lips together.

 

“Who are you?” Erik demands the moment he finds his voice and her icy gaze snaps to him.

 

“Emma Frost. I’m Charles’ best friend.”

 

“Oh.” Frost. He’s heard of her somewhere, he knows, a memory he can’t quite grasp waving at him like a corner of paper sticking out of a crack. Charles, he decides, Charles would have mentioned his best friend at some point, wouldn’t he?

 

“Yes. I came as soon as I heard.”

 

“How did you . . . hear?”

 

Emma smiles again, though it’s more a reflexive muscular movement than expression of amusement. “Charles told me.” She taps her temple and he nods slowly. “We’re . . . bonded, you could say. Telepathic sames.”

 

“Um . . . oh.” Erik nods slowly, looking between Charles and Emma, whose pale blue eyes have moved back to his sleeping face, affection flooding them.

 

“Show me what happened.”

 

“No. Look in Charles’ head.”

 

She sighs and Erik flinches the moment he feels the frigid touch against his mind. He attempts to draw away, to shield himself, which seems to amuse her, and she presses forward until his head begins to throb. It withdraws in a rush and he opens his eyes, not realizing he’d closed them, having to blink several times before being able to comprehend the sight before him.

 

Charles’ eyes are open and filled with something Erik has never seen there before. His hand is a vice around Emma’s forearm, and her face is contorted in pain. Erik stares between the telepaths for several long, aching minutes before they break apart. Emma shakes herself and Charles smiles slowly, squeezing her arm gently before withdrawing his hand. She sweeps it behind her just as Erik catches sight of a red mark that will likely bruise.

 

“You’re awake,” Erik murmurs, and Charles deigns to glance at him, blinking slowly, his expression stony. It melts away after a moment and he’s the Charles Xavier that Erik knows and loves. This touch against his mind is soft and familiar, gentle as the kiss of a feather against his consciousness.

 

“I needed rest,” Charles states simply, smiling sweetly, “it’s been a . . . trying few days, no?” He looks up at Emma and whatever crosses between them is more than telepathy.

 

“Very. How are you feeling?”

 

“Sore.” He chuckles and flexes his fingers, looking down at the bandages on his arms, then back at Emma, who’s frowning. “And I can’t feel my legs.”

 

“Charles, I—”

 

“I don’t want to hear your apologies, Erik. It won’t do anything. Unless you have the ability to apologize away the damage. Do you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then keep it to yourself.”

 

Charles’ voice is hard, his eyes hurt, expression guarded. He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. “Get me out of this hospital before I murder everyone in it, please.”

 

**XLIII.**

 

He sits in silence across from Emma, reading the paper and ignoring her pointed looks. The woman—whose secondary mutation allows her to become a diamond—sighs often and theatrically, but never says anything. Her long, blonde hair is tied up and she’s sporting a pair of silk pajamas from one of the several suitcases lining the wall of their flat.

 

They both jerk up at the sound of a crash.

 

Erik loses track of Emma, sight going into tunnel vision. The doors spring open before he can think to command them to do so, the lock on the bathroom door unlatching despite the couple’s silent agreement that a locked door meant alone time was requested.

 

The shower curtain has been torn down and the water patters against it where it cocoons a motionless Charles. He sees red in the tub and for a moment, assumes the worst. But there is Charles’ mind licking against his. The magnetist makes quick work of pulling the curtain away, tossing it behind him and looking at Charles’ quivering, naked form.

 

He sees cuts on his pale legs, angry, oozing welts and bruises, like someone had assaulted them with a rusty hacksaw. Charles lifts his head slowly, wet hair dripping in his face, and Erik almost misses the blood over the natural red of the telepath’s lips. But he sees it rolling down his chin, the swollenness of his lower lip.

 

“Liebling, yo—”

 

“Erik, get out.” Charles’ voice quavers, and Erik can’t tell if the water on Charles’ face is from the shower or his eyes.

 

“Your legs—”

 

“Erik, my love, please.” It cracks on “love” and Erik feels as if he’s staring at a much younger, more vulnerable version of his lover. He reaches out again and Charles flinches away, raising shaky fingers to his temple, and he hears it as surely in his mind as aloud: “ **GET OUT**.”

 

When he climbs into bed beside Charles later that night, the Englishman is dead silent and there are bloodstained bandages on his fingertips.

 

**XLIV.**

 

They don’t speak, not to one another.

 

Or, rather, Charles doesn’t speak to Erik. Or anyone for that matter.

 

Emma Frost spends more time with Charles than Erik would like, and he’s sure they communicate telepathically, but Charles is detached, sullen. His eyes are like an opaque stone whose luster has worn away under the weight of time and a thousand fingers sullying its face. They do not dance or convey distaste, they simply Are, moving about to gaze at whatever he’s set his sights on, but that is all. A grimace etches itself into his features; lips downturned, brow not quite furrowed, but drawn into displeasure, a tightness of expression.

 

He sits by the window with a blanket wrapped around his dead legs, a cup of long-since cooled tea held loosely in his fingers, a damp spot in his lap, stickiness on his fingers from where it sloshed over when Emma handed it to him. Frost sits across from him, having dragged an armchair over, curled up in her white silk nightie, hair in a bun. They’re still, like a life-sized portrait stripped of its frame.

 

Emma, beautiful and poised, only disturbing the image with her occasional blinks, or the twitching of her gaze. And then Charles, drawn into himself and wan, shadows circling his eyes.

 

The wheelchair suits him ill. Erik knows this is no longer his Charles. His Charles who is made for Life. Life and kinesthetic action; for dancing in the kitchen and grinding his hips against Erik’s in the showers after a midnight swim. The chair is too large, too impersonal a contraption, and certainly uncomfortable, and Charles is chained to and by it, his iridescent wings clipped and a shackle slipped beneath his skin, melded to his bones.

 

The still-life is interrupted as Charles glances up, and Erik feels, once again, as if he has stepped into another life, some other Erik’s universe, one who made only poor decisions. This cannot be the same Charles he met in the pool, the man who had radiated impudence and pleasantry like a sun.

 

A bone-deep sorrow steals over Charles’ expression and his eyes flick back to his lap. Emma glances up, sighs, shakes her head.

 

“I . . .” Erik frowns, tries to coax Charles into looking at him, reaches a tentative hand forward. It is rejected with a shrug and the telepath rolls his shoulders as if still attempting to shake off a pesky fly. “ _Charles_.”

 

Their eyes meet and something cracks.

 

“Is this how it’s gonna be, huh?” Erik explodes first, his denied hand curling into a fist. “That bullet might as well’ve _killed you_ for all you do now, Charles. It was an _accident_ , you don’t think I feel fucked up over this?! What do you _want_ , Charles? Tell me.”

 

Charles blinks once, twice, scratches his wrist and looks up finally, expression hard and cold. “I want you my bloody legs back, Erik! I don’t want to be a **_useless invalid_**! This isn’t a world kind to cripples, this life of mine isn’t made for one! I’m _broken_ and there’s nothing that can be done to fix it! No mutants with healing powers or time-traveling abilities to fix this! You’re right, perhaps that bullet _should have_ killed me.”

 

Erik doesn’t mean to hit Charles. The telepath’s words hang between them, churlish and ugly, and before he or Charles can stop it, Erik’s fist is connecting with his lover’s face. The teacup falls from Charles’ hands and shatters on the floor, leaving a frigid silence in its wake.

 

Emma is completely still, her expression frozen in shock. Erik steps back immediately, uncurling his fisted hand and staring at Charles in horror. For his part, Charles is tense, a hand cradling his cheek, turmoil swirling through cerulean, utterly crushed. In that moment, Erik sees a small child in place of the man he’s shared a life with all these months. Charles is an unfamiliar little boy with hopeless blue eyes quickly filling with tears.

 

The image flickers and fades and Charles is staring directly at him, bruise blooming on his cheek, eye swelling.

 

“You need to not be here right now.”

 

“Charles—”

 

“You need to not be here right now. You need to not be here right now.”

 

His voice is mechanical, like an audio recording with only those words to regurgitate until the end of time. All too suddenly, Erik is reminded that Emma is there when her diamond hands fall on his biceps and the woman is steering him toward the door.

 

“Get out of here, Erik,” she says softly. “Don’t come back for a few days if you like your mind the way it is.” The hall is too bright, the lights refracting off her facets. She stares him in the eye, shakes her head, and slams the door shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shaw next chapter!


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